Masks
by madstoryteller999
Summary: When Sakura walks home after sending Naruto and the Sasuke Retrieval Squad off, the last thing she expects is to be attacked. What she could have never anticipated is that evening changing...everything. / Sakura-centric
1. Chapter 1: Milk

_**A QUICK PREFACE**  
_

Man, this has been brewing in my head for years...and now I've finally found the temerity to actually start writing it.

Maybe the canon Sakura is one of the best medic nins in the world; but that's never been enough for me. Because I've always needed her (or, honestly, any female character in the series) to be comparable to Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, Itachi, etc., meaning: _pushed and broken and challenged in the same exact way_. Kishimoto's depiction of female shinobi-life is a transparently gendered experience: when it comes to the critical combat, men are the ones predominantly relied upon, women instead relegated to the role of healers or back-up. Which is...really, fucking annoying.

So, yeah. This story is going to be gritty and at times gory—but it's also going to have its counterpart moments. This is after all—or at least, I intend it to be—ultimately a romance.

So a challenge to myself: can I escape the bonds of socialization to render a kickass female character gloriously unburdened by what Kishimoto tells us it means to be female while also telling a love story?

I sure as hell am going to try.

 **Also: A Consolation**  


For those as impatient reading as I was while writing this: hold out. The meat of this story begins in the sixth chapter :) Buuutttt the ones leading up to it are necessary :D And now, onto the actual story...

* * *

The sun set on the horizon, casting the path and the buildings into brazen shades of gold. Despite the beauty of the scene before her, however, Sakura was otherwise occupied.

Hours had passed since the retrieval squad had departed. And though she had long wiped away those tears and had even managed to finish the grocery errands her mother had rudely barked at her on her way out (didn't she _care_ that Sakura was absolutely miserable?), she could no longer ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach that had been present all afternoon.

Since the events of a few hours earlier, the Voice—that insidious force that had helped Sakura shove Ino out during the Chunin exams—had become unusually active. And while she was no stranger to it whispering outrageous things, it had never been this vocal.

 _Weak_ , the Voice snarled. _Weak, weak, weak!_

Righteous indignation alone kept her back straight as she continued her trip back home. Sakura had done absolutely _nothing_ wrong; she had tried convincing Sasuke with her deep love for him, and when that failed, she had had no options left. She couldn't _hurt_ the boy she liked. That was someone else's job.

As a child, Sakura had never had any conscious preoccupations with the shinobi-life or fighting. But, faithfully following Ino, Sakura had learned to become a kunoichi nevertheless. She had risen to the top in her academics and placed below the boys in taijutsu and other physical activities. Sakura couldn't let her muscles get too big, after all—couldn't let her body get scarred, because that's not what a lady was supposed to look like. Incidentally, her parents who were both civilian merchants had made their peace with Sakura's lifestyle with compromises like these.

And Sakura was _good_ at being a kunoichi. Her Academy teachers told her so. She had about an average amount of chakra, they said, but she also had _excellent_ chakra control, which would make her a good medic-nin if she ever chose it—

 _Why don't you make your precious Sasuke-kun bleed yourself? Pretty, pretty blood, I bet he has._

Sakura paled in revulsion at the Voice's words. "You are violent and _crazy_!" For as far as she could see, the road was abandoned. Still, she lowered her voice. "I would never do that to Sasuke-kun—or anybody!"

 _You're not going to be able to keep me locked away forever._

Oh, yes she was, Sakura thought vehemently to herself.

Her toes stubbed against a rock in her path, and she heard a tearing sound below her. Scowling downwards, she saw that her sandal had gotten caught and torn. She bent to her knees to try and fix the sandal. If she could grab that loose end and make a make-shift knot over here…

The milk bottle lay forgotten at her side, attention devoted to the sandal she was attempting to salvage. The sooner she fixed it, the sooner she could make the rest of the trip home and spend the rest of the evening crying into her pillow. Biting her lip, she grabbed both ends and stretched them toward each other to tie.

She paused when she heard footsteps.

"What's that?" Sakura whispered, heart pulsing rapidly in her chest. Fingers shaking, she stood up from her kneeling position.

* * *

Years later, Sakura would think back to that night. She would think, mainly, about how quickly it all happened—how protracted build ups and suspense were attributes of stories and artfully written novels, not real life.

Because in real life, Sakura encountered none of those things.

"Look what we have here."

From the park's bushes on either side of her stepped three grown men. Civilians; they wore no hitai-ate. But they were lean and muscled, with a look in their eyes that made her hand go straight for her pouch. Her stomach churned when she realized that she had left it at home.

"Pink hair," one of them rasped, inching closer. "That's rare, isn't it?"

"What do you want?" Sakura demanded. Her mind fumbled to understand what was happening before her. She had walked this path so many times without a problem. _Why now?_

The third man stepped forward. By the way the other two gave way for them, it appeared that he was the leader. He was the biggest of the three, with black hair and wide, dark eyes.

"I'm a ninja," Sakura warned. "Don't come any closer."

"Really?" the third man drawled, white teeth flashing. "Don't look it."

Sakura's heart plunged into her stomach. No Kunai or shuriken. If they stepped closer, she would—she would have to fight them hand-to-hand.

When the first man laughed nastily and made a grab for her waist, Sakura darted back. She saw the second man move from behind her, but wasn't fast enough to avoid it. He fisted her hair, thick, calloused hands scraping and drawing blood from her scalp to restrain her.

Sakura twisted—ignoring the sharp pain of hair being ripped from her scalp—to send one leg flying high. Her foot landed squarely on his face, but her strength must have been nothing compared to his mass, and he only staggered back.

"You little bitch," he snarled. Lunging forward, he punched her right in the stomach. Sakura's mind went blank with the pain. Thick, cloying liquid dribbled from her mouth.

"Don't damage the organs," the third man hissed. She felt his hands wrap around her arms.

Organ traffickers, she processed in terror. Beginning to cry now, she scrabbled wildly against him, nails flying like claws as she searched for his face. She heard him curse behind her when her nails raked against his cheek. Another hand reached his eyes, and he dropped her reflexively.

When the next came at her, she was more prepared. She feinted to the side like she had been trained at the academy and lashed out with one hand, pushing fingers through his eyeballs and into his head. He released a scream and crumpled to his knees.

 _One down,_ the Voice growled in her head, _Two more_.

But unlike the first, the second man managed to catch her arms. The third man grabbed her legs, neutralizing their maneuverability as easily as the man holding her arms.

"Get off!" Sakura screamed.

"You've been more trouble than I anticipated," the third man chuckled darkly.

"Help! _Help!"_

She felt the man behind her bend down, sniffing her hair and grunting at the scent of her shampoo. "Hey, she smells _good_ …What do you think?"

"I think it's only fair compensation, given what she's done to our friend over there."

Sakura's eyes flew open in primal panic at the implication laden in their tone. Wilder than ever, she raged against their hold on her. She could no longer see through the tears in her eyes, the world a blur. Why couldn't she fight them? Why wouldn't Sasuke-kun help her?

She felt hands begin tearing at her clothes, and she screamed, loud and high. "No, no, no… _let go!_ Please, please, help! Sasuke-kun!"

 _He's not here,_ the Voice roared.

"Help—help me," Sakura choked out, limbs twisting, "Kakashi-sensei! _Kakashi-sensei!_ "

 _They're not here, Sakura-chan_ , the Voice told her remorselessly, mockingly. Sakura stilled at the Voice, suddenly numb to the hands at the Voice's unbelievable coldness. Without warning, it was like her consciousness had been transported to another plane, where it was only her and the Voice. A colder, monstrous version of herself with sharp teeth and terrifying eyes gazed back at her in her mind's eye, smiling slightly. The creature's mouth opened:

 _If you want this to stop_ —

Sakura's jaw tightened, breath heaving.

 _—LET ME OUT!_

It was a deafening, primal roar, so guttural that she could feel its force vibrate through her bones.

After that, Sakura knew only darkness.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Please leave kudos and comments!**


	2. Chapter 2: Sedation

She woke to find herself staring without comprehension at two dead bodies.

 _Milk…she could smell its sweet sourness in the air…_

 _Liquid, coating her hands. Not milk._

A groan sounded to her left. Nerves frayed, her head snapped painfully to its origin. The first man, the one who had attacked first, stirred. Blood streamed from his closed eyes as he fought to get himself to his knees. He whimpered, hands searching around him for the other men. When he encountered dead weight, he let out a horrified groan.

A loud choking noise emerged from Sakura's throat, her eyes bugging in terror and revulsion as she understood what had happened. Her hands snapped to her neck and left inadvertent, morbid handprints. She couldn't breathe _._ She abandoned the destroyed milk and fled, sprinting as hard as she could.

She stopped only when her stomach could no longer keep down its contents. When she straightened, despite what she had expended, the thick, cloying scent of copper clogged her nostrils. She could feel it, the slickness on her face, dripping down her chin.

When she had reached up to wipe her mouth, she had coated her face in blood. _Their blood._

Sakura sobbed, wanting the stickiness to vanish from her fingers.

 _Had she killed them?_ No, not her. _She couldn't have_. But—but if not her, then who? Who else could have done it?

Her heart pounded in her chest.

Oh god—oh god, she had done it. It had to have been her. Couldn't have been anyone else.

She gasped for breath. She sank to her knees and wiped her hands furiously in the ground. What had she done what had she done what she done—

Salty tears mixed into mud in the first below her. Eventually, some still-rational part of her realizing she needed to get home before her parents noticed anything amiss. Because if anyone found out—

 _No one could ever find out. Not her mother, not her father. Not Ino. Not Sasuke-kun._

Somehow, she mustered the strength to pick herself up, to force her limbs into motion before the first rays of dawn. She stumbled home and scrubbed and scrubbed until her fingers were bleeding.

When she woke up the next morning, she remembered something vaguely about cold water and bleach and a painful throbbing in her hands. Her father read the newspaper and her mother sipped her coffee and complaining about the milk she had forgotten to pick up again and Sakura…

Sakura was a convulsing, bleeding mess—oozing red and puss and tissue and bone. An open wound.

* * *

Sakura was no stranger to death. She had been there when Gato and Zabuza and Haku had died—she'd smelled the stench of burning, rotting bodies before. But she had never killed anyone.

She could hardly have imagined until that point what a marked change that distinction would make.

Unsurprisingly, as she had resorted to in the past to cope with more mundane sources of stress (her mother's nagging, Sasuke not liking her, etc.) she developed a routine to ward off insanity. She dragged herself home. She took a cold shower to wash off again the blood from her skin and hands long after its visible disappearance (she _knew_ it was still there, in the lines of her hands and skin). Then, she grabbed a bottle of sleeping pills and went to bed.

Two weeks later, the retrieval squad returned. A day later, Naruto announced that he was going to leave Konoha to travel with and learn from the legendary sannin Jiraiya.

The announcement weighed heavily on Sakura's chest as she exited Shikamaru's hospital room, leaving Ino alone with her teammate. Without the weight of the flowers she had been carrying, her hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

They stilled momentarily when she caught sight of a tall figure leaning nonchalantly against the corridor outside of Naruto's hospital room.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura burst out in dazed shock. She tried to cover it. "H-how are you?"

"Neither especially good nor especially bad," Kakashi returned evenly. The book remained in front of his face.

"Oh." The following words tumbled out in a rush, chinks in her tenuous calm. "I was wondering when we were going to start training again." Was her voice higher than usual?

And why did his smile look so… fake? She felt unsettled, uncomfortably aware that she had never had anything resembling a rapport with Kakashi, which even Naruto had been able to boast.

The tall, wirily muscled man lowered his book. With ostensible reluctance, he fixated one, half-lidded grey eye on her instead of the open page. "I believe the Hokage has for the moment disbanded Team Seven, as two thirds of our team has left or will be leaving Konoha."

Sakura blinked uncomprehendingly. "Are—are you saying you won't be teaching me anymore?"

"Godaime has decided that I return to my…ANBU duties full-time."

She would have missed it if she hadn't been looking at him so closely. Just for an instant—there was the minutest change in his demeanor, prompted by the mention of the organization. If questioned, she would have never been able to explain what had changed in that moment, except that the hair on her arms rose.

(And, perhaps, that she had the sudden sense that the man before her wasn't the one she thought she'd known all along).

Her voice was small when she found it. "Who's training me from now, then?"

Kakashi's gaze landed somewhere above her head, seamlessly performing the lazy, inattentive jounin. He gave another fake, little smile, eyes crinkling above his mask. "I'm sure you'll find someone good. Gai is always eager to take on another student."

Sakura felt her fingers begin to tremble again. She shoved them under her armpits in a futile attempt to still them. She had _killed—_ She—she needed to be taught how to—

"Wait," Sakura tried desperately, "I'm sure you could train me when you're not on missions. I don't mind waiting around. I can practice when you're gone—"

His expression didn't shift. "To be honest, Sakura-chan, given your skillset and temperament, I would advise you to pursue becoming a medic-nin. I would bother the Hokage about that—they say she's the best."

With a nonchalant wave, he vanished, leaving Sakura by herself.

 _A medic-nin waits for the injury and then tries to fix it_ , the Voice snarled. _If you had waited for the injury in the park that night, you know what would have happened_. _I want_ other _people's pretty, pretty blood—I can't get it if you're dead._

Sakura flinched as the Voice echoed in her head.

* * *

When the dark-haired woman at the front desk saw her a week later, she didn't look surprised. She smiled at Sakura. "If you're here to see Tsunade-sama, she's on the door to the right."

Sakura moved to the instructed door. Pushing it open, she reached a circular room with a panoramic view of Konoha. Sitting in front of the large window was the Godaime. Tsunade looked up from a thick stack of papers with a menacing scowl on her face.

"Haruno Sakura," the woman noted coolly. "How may I help you?"

Sakura paused unsurely, suddenly overwhelmed by the intense mid-afternoon heat. She could feel, with uncomfortable extremeness of sensitivity, the tendrils of hair plastered to her neck.

"I…suppose I want you to take me on as your apprentice."

" _Suppose_?"

"I want it," Sakura returned immediately, desperation seeping into her voice and rendering it sharp.

The Hokage planted both hands on her desk and stood up with sudden force. "Even if I were inclined, it would be far from easy. What I have achieved in medical ninjutsu has taken me what has been a lifetime for most shinobi. To be my successor in the hospital—"

"I don't want that."

Shock registered on Tsunade's face, eyes widening. Then, her gaze narrowed. "Then what do you want from me?"

"Training in taijutsu. Ninjutsu." Sakura said softly. "Some medical ninjutsu as well."

Tsunade examined her harshly and demanded, "Why not accept the title?"

"I—I don't think I have the right…temperament." Letting herself into a hospital room with civilians, into _surgery_ when she had killed like—like _that_ …It made Sakura want to vomit, the very idea of her being some child's doctor.

The Hokage's jaw tightened, and she leaned back, crossing her arms. "On the contrary," the woman told her, "I've been told you have the perfect temperament. Excellent chakra control, academically strong, non-confrontational tendencies. You prefer to avoid fighting, isn't that right? And frankly, your taijutsu and other ninjutsu have not developed much beyond your Academy days."

Sakura didn't know what else to say. So she said nothing.

"The other old fools on the council would have been thrown out of this office for sheer impertinence." Tsunade gazed at her in silence for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she smirked.

"Alright, I'll take you on."

Before she could even blink in disbelief, Sakura was unceremoniously booted out of the office and told to return at five the next morning.

* * *

To her surprise, the hokage kept her word. Tsunade drew up an official contract stating that she had taken Sakura on as her apprentice. In the same scroll, she declared Hinata—an optimal choice because of her dojutsu's abilities—her successor for the hospital.

Thus, the Hokage started both Sakura and Hinata with first-step medical ninjutsu.

Sakura had difficulty adapting to the Godaime's teaching style. Perhaps, because it had been a long time since someone else had catered their lessons specifically toward her. Or—she was forced to acknowledge—perhaps because Sakura had never truly been interested in being a shinobi before.

"Place your hands above the fish," she was instructed.

"Okay," Sakura responded.

"Apply chakra."

"I am."

"Direct it through its pathways."

"…I don't follow." She offered it hesitantly, half-expecting the older woman to walk away from her, to move onto another, more talented student.

"What specifically do you not get?" was returned instead.

"How do I locate the pathways?"

"Do you remember the diagrams?"

"N-no. I—I'm sorry—"

"No point apologizing. Pull them out again. Look at them."

"Okay." A pause as she reached down to pull them from her satchel. The whispery rustle of scrolls being unrolled sounded through the air.

"What is the most standardized chakra point on any antigonia?"

"The vessel beneath its eye," she responded immediately.

"Enter the chakra system through there and then feel the rest out."

"…Ah."

Outside of her medical training, Tsunade also took her out to the training fields three times a week to learn her infamous monstrous strength.

The first time she saw her mentor shatter a boulder with her muscled, _human_ arm, Sakura's jaw dropped. She didn't even feel the slivers of rock as they sliced her skin. For days after, she had only to close her eyes to remember the scene, gripped by an unprecedented drive to do be able to do the same.

She worked hard, training for hours outside of her scheduled time with Tsunade. And though her mentor was shocked at her resulting progress, the Voice was derisive about what it perceived to be insufficient diligent.

 _Lazy bitch._

Sakura clenched her teeth until blood flooded her mouth, moving through katas in her backyard even despite the pain. It was well past midnight.

 _If you can concentrate chakra in your fists to make your punches stronger, what_ else _do you think can do?_

The Voice was a satanic presence, whispering dangerous, insidious things to her when she was exhausted, weak, and desperate to be _more_. And though she had promised herself to never, ever listen to it again, promised to convince herself so strongly of its non-existence that she would forget it was there entirely, it had driven her nearly mad.

With sweat and tears and a migraine that threatened to split her head from its insistent raging, Sakura had given in.

She ended up in the hospital the next day, waiting for Hinata to attend to her.

"How can I help you today, Sakura-san?" the Hyuuga heir asked quietly, veins protruding around her eyes as she scanned Sakura.

"I was…experimenting with concentrating chakra in other parts of my body. Before I perfected the technique, I injected too much concentrated chakra several times in too small a space. I found mild damage to the pathways when I scanned them, here and here."

Hinata's eyes widened. "As your attending physician, Sakura-san, and because Tsunade-sama wants me to handle all your injuries for my training, I must warn you that what you are doing is extremely d-dangerous. Even one instant of distraction and you could risk permanently injuring yourself."

Sakura nodded evasively at that. She knew that the chakra paths were thickest in the hands and feet, making it easiest for concentrating chakra there, while other locations were narrower and therefore riskier. It _hadn't_ been rationality that had led her here. She tilted her head back as the cool sensation of Hinata's chakra began working on her legs.

In the middle of her work, Hinata paused and asked with slight hesitance, "H-how is Naruto-kun?"

Sakura opened her eyes and spotted the slightly pink tinge to the other girl's face. It reminded her of Sasuke (the-way-he-left), which reminded her of—

"He writes to Iruka-sensei regularly," she answered stiltedly, "Iruka-sensei fills me in whenever we run into each other. You should visit him."

"Oh," Hinata murmured, gaze falling shyly. "I couldn't do that."

"From what I've heard, he's doing fine."

Hinata nodded and then pulled away to lift her clipboard. She marked some things down and then looked back. "That's all, Sakura-san. No more training for today, but you should be fine by tomorrow."

"Thanks," Sakura said, sliding off the hospital bed. She left the room and made her way to the hospital entrance.

As she stepped outside, the hot summer sun beat down on her. Her old short-sleeved qipao dress, unfortunately, would have fared better in the hot weather than what she was wearing. But Sakura had turned fourteen and grown several inches over the summer, also outgrowing the dress. Keeping in mind what was sustainable for the amount of money she was currently making, she now wore the standard issue black pants and black short-sleeved shirt common among shinobi along with a grey flak jacket.

Without the recourse of training to occupy her mind, she decided to make her way to the archive library. As a genin still, most of the library's contents remained inaccessible to Sakura. But she was still able to peruse some of the medical jutsu scrolls from other villages.

Sakura entered the Konoha library of archives and flashed her ID to the chunin stationed at the desk. She paused half way to her destination while going up the stairs. The desk stationed in the front of the third landing was conspicuously empty. She wondered if that had anything to do with the curvaceous redhead Sakura had seen around the jounin on previous visits.

Spurred by a burst of curiosity for the first time in months, Sakura left the stairs and moved quietly into the long lines of scrolls. She found kanji indicating the categorization of shelves for the floor. Her gaze paused at the sign erected near the back-right corner.

'SUMMONING SCROLLS'

Sakura mouthed the words. Tsunade had a slug summon. She had mentioned it during a training session.

The shelf of scrolls towered above her. How tall, she could not say. The scrolls themselves had been shrunken down in order to all fit within the racks. Unlike other sections of the floor, the library hadn't bothered to place special barrier jutsus here. Strange.

Hesitantly, Sakura reached out a hand to hold one of the scrolls. With an immediate hiss, she dropped it as a burning sensation coursed through her hand. So the scrolls themselves prevented unwanted users. Scowling, Sakura passed her hand over more scrolls.

In minutes, she finished scanning all the racks she could reach from the floor. Her gaze moved upward. With a quick glance to make sure the desk was still empty, she directed chakra toward her legs and began walking up the tall shelf to access the higher levels.

At each new level, Sakura crouched and passed her hands over the scrolls. Welts, red and raised, lined her hands now from the thousands of scrolls she must have touched. Just as she began to contemplate leaving, her hand passed over one scroll without any pain. Blinking, she touched it again to make sure she had not imagined it. Her hand felt exactly the same as it had before.

Without thinking much of it, Sakura grabbed the scroll. She slipped it into her flak jacket and flipped off the shelf, landing silently on the granite floor once again. She made her way down the staircase and then out the entrance. Back outside, Sakura sprinted to the edge of the village to a lone training ground she knew teams rarely visited. While the Voice's chilling laughter echoed triumphantly in her head, she pulled out the scroll silently and tilted it to read the etching on the end of the wooden roller: 烏

Crow, Sakura thought to herself with slight surprise.

Rolling it out, she found out that the scroll far longer than she had initially thought. Following the instructions of the contract, she bit into her thumb, signed her name, impressed her bloodied finger prints into the paper, and made the hand signs: boar, dog, bird, monkey, and ram.

She slammed her hand down into the ground.

For a moment, nothing happened—then smoke burst forth from the scroll and blocked her vision. When the smoke dissipated, she saw the profile of a lone, normal-sized crow, sitting right where her hand had made contact with the ground.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Please leave kudos and a comment!**


	3. Chapter 3: Karasu

Its feathers were an inky, seamless black that gleamed under the sunlight. It was a fine-looking crow, she supposed, as far as crows went. Then the crow turned. And the eye that met her was not black, like the one that she had seen before, but a terribly, familiar red.

 _Sharingan_ , the Voice snarled.

Strangely, her mind went immediately not to the obvious suspect, but to Kakashi.

"H-how," Sakura stammered, taking a step back. A second later, she was in a world of red, blood dripping at the corners of the landscape, the crow in front of her.

"You summoned me," she heard in her head. The crow gazed placidly at her, but did not open its beak once.

"You've placed me in a genjutsu," she accused haltingly. When she reached for her kunai, she found that her pouch had disappeared.

"This is how I am able to communicate with you," the crow answered tonelessly, "You should be able to break out of it any time—a mild genjutsu like this is nothing for a genjutsu user."

Sakura stiffened. "I'm not a genjutsu user."

The crow's wings flashed out at that and the landscape seemed to explode in a flurry of black feathers. Their heavy, soft brush spilled around her, suffocating her in its sheer volume.

A second later, she could breathe again.

She stood at the exact training field she had been on minutes before. But the colors of the sky and the grass and the trees had become horribly distorted.

"You are a genjutsu user," the crow corrected coolly. "And your perfect chakra control enables you to excel in the field, on par with those possessing dojutsus. I am extremely picky—I would not have allowed the contract otherwise."

 _Genjutsu_? She had been successfully placed her under a genjutsu almost five minutes into the bell test. Admittedly, she remembered an off-the-cuff remark about her possibly being well-suited for genjutsu, but had never been told anything about it beyond that.

"What have you learned?"

"About genjutsu?" Sakura responded, disarmed. "I—I can usually tell if they're there? Who are you? What are you called?"

The crow's wings flashed out again, and she reflexively flinched. However, nothing happened this time. A crow's features were not ones that were especially capable of emoting. Nevertheless, she felt the weight of the crow's burning gaze on her.

"What are your elemental affinities?"

"What?"

The crow's sharingan seemed to grow redder. "Has no one taught you anything?"

Sakura's mouth opened and then closed soundlessly.

The crow flapped its wings and took brief flight, before landing on her shoulder. Sakura turned her head to meet its gaze. Somehow, the crow's voice was louder now.

"Your body does not seem the type to put on significant muscle mass," the creature noted clinically, "But, like my other human, this does not mean you cannot gain strength."

"Other human?" Sakura caught immediately. "Do you have several other contractors?"

The crow cocked its head to the side. It seemed amused.

"One other," it answered. "For how much longer, I do not know."

 _This bird kills its contractors_ , the Voice growled. In the genjutsu, however, the Voice's words echoed around Sakura and the crow instead of remaining in her head.

The crow turned on her shoulder. "Interesting. And not true. The contract does not allow it. Do you know what you are?" the crow questioned lightly, seemingly at the Voice. Enraged silence responded to the question.

"No, then," the crow murmured. It met her gaze evenly. "I have carried multiple names. My other human calls me Shisui. If it suits, take it. Or—don't."

Not even a minute of reflection led Sakura to the conclusion that the crow seemed more trouble than it was worth. Tsunade had spoken of the slug as a kind, almost maternal creature—the crow, Shisui, or whatever it was called, was decidedly not that. Perhaps naively, Sakura assumed that could be the end of it. Unless she summoned it, she hardly imagined they would ever meet again; and after this, she decided she was never making those hand signs again.

"Nice meeting you," Sakura muttered, eyeing the space around the crow shiftily. _Not_. "It's been a rather long day, so I think I'll be heading home now."

The crow gazed back placidly.

"Are you going to dispel the genjutsu?" she asked sharply.

"No," it returned calmly. And the world dripped like melting paint all around her again. Faceless shinobi, dark shadowy forms spilling from the summons's wings, materialized in front of her.

Sakura sprung back in confusion, eyes round as she sought the crow. "What— _?_ "

Even as her body moved, she didn't truly believe what was clearly imminent until it happened. The next thing Sakura knew was a rushing sound in her ears as she went flying back into a boulder. The shattering, mind-numbing pain hit her a second later.

She coughed, blood spilling from her mouth. When she saw the shinobi who had dealt the blow to her solar plexus rushing forward, however, she scrambled into a crouch, arms poised in front of her defensively.

What transpired was less of a battle and more of a glorified beat-up session. Each time Sakura thought she found an opening, an opportunity to move from the crouch into a more offensive stance, another shinobi stepped in and beat her back down. Within minutes, every bone in her body felt like it had shattered. With the last bit of her strength, her arms locked tightly around her rib cage and her head. When the shinobi stopped, it took her a long dazed moment to realize they had, so terrible was the pain. On the brink of consciousness, she looked blearily out. The crow was perched above her.

"Training," the crow said coldly, head cocked to the side. "Learn the water release technique properly by next time."

 _Next time?_

When Sakura blinked, she found herself back on the training ground, somehow physically unharmed but aching, still feeling the echo of every one of the injuries.

* * *

The next day, Tsunade had scarcely left the training field before it made its appearance. It was more instinct than reason that led Sakura to dart in the opposite direction (though she was sure that reason would have led her to the same course of action as well). But it was too late. By the next blink, she found herself in the same oddly real yet undeniably distorted imitation of reality, the crow perched on a lone boulder before her.

"Did you do what I asked?"

Sakura bristled, unwilling to admit that, yes, she had. In the twenty four hours or so since had last seen the diabolical _thing_ , she had been terrified of being caught like this again and beaten within an inch of her life. She was surprised to find, however, that despite her former fear, anger now dominated.

"I asked you a question," it said coldly.

It seemed anger also granted her a kind of temerity that made her former concerns of self-preservation concerningly null and void. She bared her teeth, ignoring the part of herself—some remnant of her old self—that was mollified by the behavior.

The crow shifted with transparent mockery. "For your sake later, I hope that is a 'yes.' But for now: katas. Yesterday, you demonstrated you knew none."

In the face of this ludicrous charge, Sakura said curtly, "I learned the academy katas."

If the crow had eyebrows, she had the sense that it would be raising one.

One wing lifted nonchalantly and two faceless shinobi misted into corporality in front of her. Throat drying, Sakura took a shaky step back, bravado shaken.

"Go on," Shisui said genially, "demonstrate your mastery."

 _Break them!_ The Voice crooned. _Kill them, crush—_

Not at all correlated to the Voice's goading, she convinced herself, she somehow mustered something considerably like courage but not quite the genuine article. Grounding her heels into the dirt, she launched forward.

Remarkably, the shinobi remained motionless. That is, until the moment her foot was a centimeter from the first's face. Then, a hand lashed out with punishing force and grasped her ankle.

"What do you call this?" the crow called from above her.

Sakura winced at the pressure of the shinobi's grip on her. Gritting her teeth, she bit out, "Mae tobi geri."

"I don't think so," Shisui murmured indifferently. It flapped its wings. At this apparent command, the shinobi yanked her ankle up. Agony burst through Sakura's pelvis, black spots flashing through her vision.

" _That_ ," the crow murmured, "is mae tobi geri."

When the shinobi still didn't let her ankle go, Sakura turned a vicious glare on the summon. "Alright. I get it."

"Do you?" Shisui remarked. "Excellent."

With another flap of wings, the shinobi let go. As she brought her leg down, however, it spoke again.

"Hold the position."

She froze.

The crow tutted. "No, no, you let your leg drop. Put it back where it was."

"That's impossible," Sakura grinded out. "I'm not that flexible—"

"And yet your leg was there before," Shisui said unfeelingly. "Move it back."

Aware of the lethal shinobi beside her who could attack at the crow's slightest indication, she released a pained grunt as she strained and stretched her foot a few inches higher. Each inch was a slow, gruesome struggle.

She managed for two minutes. "I can't hold it up anymore. I just _can't_."

"I understand. You're still weak," Shisui condemned with false kindness. "Why don't have your friend help you, then?"

"My friend?"

"I believe you refer to it as the Voice."

 _YES! Let me out! LET ME OUT—_

"No." Sakura said with dangerous calm.

"No?"

"No."

The crow gazed at her for a long moment, gaze unreadable. Finally, it tilted its head. "Very well. Let's move onto something else then."

Faster than her eyes could keep track of, one of the shinobi left its partner to shunshin behind her. Its hands took possession of her arms and locked them behind her. Sakura let out an enraged cry, struggling to break free.

The other shinobi strode forward almost lazily. An arm's length away from her, it came to a stop and lifted its hand with deliberation. Then, it punched her in the face.

Her entire body recoiled from the blow and a low, guttural whine escaped her lips. When she opened her eyes, she felt disoriented and had to blink several times. The shinobi drew its fist back and planted it in the same exact place, in the same exact way.

 _Thud._

And that felt like a broken nose—the thought rose above the cloud of pain. Fury set in. "What's the point of this? Are you just going to have that thing punch me until I pass out?"

The crow gazed back without malice. "If that's what it takes for you to learn to take a punch."

 _Thud._

"Why don't you trying planting your feet."

 _Thud._

"Lean into the punch."

 _Thud._

"Can't even stand your ground then, can you?"

 _Thud._

"You lack a muscled frame to stabilize yourself—"

 _Thud._

"—your shoulders and arms are too soft now—"

 _Thud._

"—your legs too thin—"

 _Thud._

That was the last thing Sakura heard.

When she did return to the land of the conscious, it was with a loud, ugly choked noise. Then, she scrabbled to sit up, angling her head down so as not to choke on the blood pooling behind her nose and into her throat.

"Back?" Shisui greeted her, "Let's review the water release technique."

Sakura kept her head down, but darted slitted eyes up at the crow. " _This_ is how you're going to play this? _Every single time_?"

"If I need to break you, I will break you. Every single time."

* * *

 **Author's Note: Please leave kudos and a comment!**


	4. Chapter 4: Unsuited

Over time, Sakura grew accustomed to returning to consciousness abruptly and with little warning. True to the crow's word, each session's end was prefaced by a gruesome beat-down, followed by a lecture or comparatively more benign lesson—every single time.

Fortunately, it was a fact of human nature that one could adapt to and, importantly, could maintain sanity in the face of, any routine, no matter how terrible. No different from the rest of her species, Sakura had grown accustomed to the periods of unconsciousness—had even disturbingly grown to like the brief, mindless rest they provided.

She was greatly unsettled, therefore, when it came to the point that her unconsciousness was no longer greeted by the typical condescending lecture and instead by a kick to the stomach.

After the first unexpected act of violence, Sakura shifted uselessly, trying to recover her stolen breath. Following a second, she managed a strangled: "I…passed…out… _what…are…you doing, you...stupid crow_?"

The faceless shinobi drove a kunai into her abdomen. Pain paralyzed her so that she could barely even breathe.

Sakura looked up at it, uncomprehending.

"Stop," she choked out, blood bubbling through her lips, "… _Did you hear me!?_ I'm done…I'm done…"

It didn't stop.

She passed out.

When she woke up again, punches rained down on her face until her eyes were swollen shut. There were two figures above her—she could sense their chakra, despite her lack of vision. In moments, she passed out again. Funny. Had she ever thought she was doing a _lot_ of that these days? Because she was. She really was.

When she woke up again with five faceless shinobi mauling her, Sakura wondered—in all seriousness—how it was possible she wasn't dead yet.

 _I'm still here_ , the Voice whispered, almost sibilant.

Despite how wrecked her body felt, Sakura's body made a spasm—ever so slightly—at the sound. Strangely, the Voice had remained utterly silent until now. She wondered if it had only been biding its time.

 _I'll kill them_ , the Voice crooned, excitement rendering its voice higher than normal, _I'll kill them all!_

And Sakura—Sakura couldn't hold it back anymore. She screamed until the only breath left in her was a gasp.

* * *

The blood of five faceless shinobi soaked the ground beneath her—her own body, in turn, battered and torn, generously deposited its own funds.

Five shinobi. When she hadn't even defeated one before.

And, like before, she remembered nothing.

Without warning, the pain vanished from her body, and Sakura could see again. She looked down to see her body as clean and unharmed as it had been when she had entered the genjutsu.

The line between the Voice and her must have been blurring because when Sakura moved, it was with a mindless _need to hurt_ that she had only ever associated with the other entity. Making rapid hand motions, Sakura screamed and released a gale of fire right where the crow stood. But, it was the crow's genjutsu and, with a flap of its wings, Shisui generated a gust of wind so strong it blew the fire into non-existence.

The crow's mismatched eyes dissected her ruthlessly. "You would use a jutsu that I taught you against me?"

Sakura released an inhuman, ugly noise, chest heaving.

But Shisui was stoic in the face of it. "That thing, what you call the Voice—it represents the splitting of yourself. You are stronger, more ruthless, when you let it possess you. Rejoin the two parts permanently."

" _No_!" Sakura snarled. "I—I know I'm not a hopeless martyr. I'll make use of it when I need to—but I control _it_. _It_ does _not_ control me!"

"That is killing intent, you ignorant child," the crow responded, derision now apparent. "Like most foolish shinobi, you have suppressed it more often than you embrace it, to the extent that _you've_ split your consciousness."

" _You_ —"

"Don't be naïve," the crow cut off coldly, "You're in the wrong occupation if you want to stay a child. Every human being, in their deepest self, relishes violence. As a shinobi, by nature of your cause, you must embody that violence."

"I won't."

"Then you are a coward," Shisui condemned remorselessly, "you are a pathetic, groveling kunoichi, despite the time and effort I have afforded you when no one else would deign to look your way, who shies away from your calling—"

"I _won't_ ," she hissed. Bizarrely, Naruto appeared in her mind's eye.

The sharingan in the crow's eye spun wildly. Despite her stony expression, fear pulsed through Sakura as she was certain she would be thrown back into the torture from before.

"You're very different from him," it charged bitterly, finally. "But in other ways—unerringly similar."

It took a second for her to catch on, her eyes narrowing slightly when she did. "You're talking about your other human."

The crow didn't acknowledge this identification. Instead, it cocked its head to the side, appearing disgusted. "Only a fool believes a shinobi's violence can be driven by an adherence to peace."

The crow gave her one last disparaging glance. In the next breath, the genjutsu fractured and she sat alone in the training field Team Seven had used to practice in.

When Sakura's gaze found the boulder next to her, she drove her first into it.

* * *

"You can't attack me tomorrow," Sakura told Shisui tonelessly a week later, scrubbing blood from her hands into her clothes. Not real blood, she reminded herself. Her stomach remained steady.

The crow cocked its head coldly. "Oh? Why is that?"

"I need money," she responded. "I need to take a mission."

"Both of your parents are alive."

Sakura's expression tightened, wondering when Shisui had gathered that information. She had never mentioned her living situation to him. "They've refused to fund my shinobi career since the Chunin Exams."

"Very well," it concluded at last, eyes glinting. "I will see you after."

* * *

That night, after picking up new kunai with the last of her monetary reserves, Sakura returned home with Ichiraku Ramen takeout in hand. After slurping the noodles, she scrubbed her clothes of any remaining dirt / blood (her own) and folded them neatly by her bed.

At six the next morning, Sakura stood at the front of a long line of shinobi to receive her next assignment from the Mission Assignment Desk.

A chunin Sakura had been handed missions by several times before waved his hand, urging her to step forward. She blinked for a moment at the unexpectedly familiar smile he sent her way.

"I have the perfect mission for you," he confided in her. He reached to the side and seemed to unearth a specific scroll from underneath a pile of similar looking scrolls. "Here you go."

Sakura bowed politely and left the room. Turning a corner, she found a nook and opened the scroll to scan its contents. C Rank escort mission from the Hidden Grass Village to the Land of Wind. Four-man squad. Meeting place at the gate.

Reaching outside, Sakura shunshined to the roof and proceeded to the gate via rooftops to avoid unnecessary traffic. When she reached the gate, she saw three figures—all a few years older than herself—waiting.

The girl was the first to notice her presence. She smiled, sharp features shifting to accommodate the expression with seeming natural ease. Her hair—red—was shorn almost to her scalp on one side and jagged and chin length on the other. She wore bulky, unisex ninja-wear.

"Hey," she greeted, stepping aside to reveal the two figures behind her. The boy to her left was tall and lanky with mop-like brown hair. The boy to her right was shorter, bulkier, with dark brows, and viewed her with an unreadable expression.

Sakura bowed. "I am Haruno Sakura. I will be a part of the four-man squad for this mission."

The girl flashed her a dazzling smile. "Nice to meet you, Sakura-san. I'm Noriko. This here is Reizo—" she pointed to the lanky boy—"and the other one is Torio."

"Oh," Sakura said, a strange feeling sprouting in her chest at the apparent familiarity they shared. "Were you all on the same genin team?"

The C ranks she had sparingly been on had mostly been with other chunin or genin whose teams had not all made the transition from genin rank to above. No one on the missions had known any of the other members.

"Something like that," the shorter boy said. Torio, Sakura recalled.

"We should leave," Reizo announced indifferently. A look passed between him and Noriko and she nodded with a wide smile.

"Ready, Sakura-san?" Noriko asked her, nudging her playfully. Sakura stared.

As they raced through the trees, she felt her stride slowing slightly to match Noriko's, who had chosen to hang at the back.

"Are you all chunin?" Sakura asked.

The other girl hummed back in affirmation. "You?"

Sakura's lips turned down slightly. "Genin. I'm planning to take the next exam, though."

"You'll get there," Noriko shrugged, smiling. "How about the rest of your team?"

Sakura felt her pace falter, but she quickly recovered. "Genin too. They found other teachers, though, so our team has…disbanded."

Noriko didn't react immediately, which took Sakura by some surprise—genin teams disbanding before members had reached chunin level was highly unusual. The other girl must have noticed something in her expression, because she asked, "Do you miss it?"

Sakura stiffened slightly at the question. In the past year, she had come to face the obvious truth that their team had been dysfunctional. At its best moments, Sakura had been on the sidelines watching her teammates push past their resentment to work together; at its worst, none of them had been on the same page, pursuing vastly different goals. And Kakashi—

Her jaw tightened. Tsunade had used her to clean up some file work a few months ago—genin team file work submitted for the Hokage's perusal, specifically—and she had learned exactly what her former teacher thought of her.

 _Haruno Sakura is unsuited to become a shinobi,_ she had found written in short, lazy strokes. _She lacks the means to either succeed or survive in this field. I have seen some skill in chakra control—perhaps a career as a low-ranking medic-nin, if at all._

Cold, condescending words, hidden all along under a mask of indifference.

Each word had been an unexpected blow to Sakura. She had known her sensei hadn't thought much of her, but she hadn't known he had thought so _little_. Had he thought of her as an _idiot_ the entire time?

"I don't know," Sakura answered at last, features strained. She and Noriko fell into silence. Her mind continued to brood over the derogatory notes. Naruto and Sasuke had each warranted four pages. She had been given three sentences.

It didn't matter, she found herself reflecting coldly. With blood on her hands, it was too late for her turn back. Whether she wanted it or not, Sakura knew she would be shinobi for life.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Please leave kudos and a comment!**


	5. Chapter 5: Kill Count

That night, they made camp about half way between Konoha and the Hidden Grass Village. Torio and Reizo pitched a tent that they would share, while Noriko and Sakura shared their own tent. Torio had first watch, but before that, they sat around a modest fire chewing some meat they had cooked after hunting down a wild boar.

"Nice weather, eh?" Noriko chirped, smiling widely as she bit into her meat with enthusiasm. The dark sky above them was ominously thick with clouds, cloaking the moon almost entirely.

Reizo's eyes flicked upwards boredly. "It looks like it's about to pour."

"Right," she agreed easily. "But it's not raining _yet_."

She beamed at all of them. Sakura watched on in silence, chewing her meat.

Torio got up suddenly. "I'm off to watch."

"Better you than me!" Noriko called mischievously.

He sent her a glare. "Fucking trees…give me knots in my neck…" He disappeared from view.

Sakura's head tilted strangely at that. "He still gets knots in his neck?" Most _genin_ were used to that by her age.

"Neck problems," Reizo explained casually.

"I could take a look, if he wanted," Sakura offered after a second. "I have some medical training."

"He's had it checked out," Noriko answered after a moment, with an apologetic smile. "Kind of a chronic thing."

Sakura nodded.

"Hey!" Noriko cried suddenly, grabbing her hand. "Let's head to our tent!"

Sakura allowed the other girl to tug her, a little bemused by her actions. The Sakura of a year ago, the one with stick thin legs and arms, the one who had complained about lacking breasts on a regular basis to Ino, would have giggled happily along with her. A self-admittedly gloomier, more cynical Sakura was now struggling to figure out how to not act like a socially inept fool.

They sat down on their respective pallets and immediately Noriko began speaking again.

"So," she said, grinning aggressively, "what's got you down?"

"Nothing," Sakura answered immediately. But after a moment, she revealed stiffly (and how couldn't she, when Noriko had been so nice and earnest the entire time, and when a huge part of her longed for what had been commonplace to her before—the idle chit chat, the confiding of inane complaints and worries): "I guess it's my team situation."

Once again, Noriko looked a little blank but hummed sympathetically nevertheless. "Hm…well, tell me about them!"

At the other's urging, Sakura felt a wealth of emotions she had been bottling down for more than a year rush forth.

"Well, one of them," she started hesitantly, "he used to annoy me. _A lot_."

Noriko nodded encouragingly.

"The other genin," Sakura began swallowing hard. "I liked him—" the words felt _sour_ now, made her lips twist—"But he left to be with his…new teacher."

"You said 'liked,'" the other girl noted, reaching over to sharpen some of her kunai. "Do you not like him anymore?"

Sakura didn't answer.

"And your team leader?" Noriko asked, easily changing tacks.

Sakura's mouth flattened. "Right. Well Kakashi—"

She broke off when the other girl stiffened almost violently beside her. The kunai in her hands trembled before she swung her head around with an amazed expression. "Your jounin sensei was the _Copy-nin_?"

"…Yes."

"Da-amn," she sighed, dragging the word out with wide, shining eyes. "Do you have any idea what his kill count is?"

"His—"

"His kill count," Noriko repeated, face hidden now by her hair. "I know ANBU members are supposed to be anonymous, but everyone _knows_ he's an ANBU captain. They talk about him in the chunin locker rooms all the time—in all the gory detail. Still don't know what ANBU mask he wears, though."

"What…kinds of stories?" Sakura asked before she could stop herself. The impending, unexpected dump of information had called forth a dark, uncomfortable tightness in her chest.

"They're horrible, if they're true," the girl murmured. "He's killed a lot of people in a lot of horrible ways. But—" she laughed coolly—"in ANBU, being a monster means you're an ANBU legend. I suppose."

Sakura flinched slightly at her words, but quickly hid the reaction. "He's…that good?" She had always known he wasn't the 'average' shinobi, but…nothing to this extent.

Noriko's voice was oddly thick. "People talk about the kages with respect, but the way they talk about him…the way I've heard it, no one measures up at killing. Not even that Uchiha who murdered his entire clan."

" _And_ he's only twenty-two," she ended with a loud huff. She shook her hair back and a playful expression danced across her face.

He _was_? In her defense, it was impossible to tell with the mask. Strangely, she had always received the impression he was older. Must have been the magnitude of his condescension.

"How old are you, Noriko-san?" she asked softly.

"Me?" Noriko straightened slightly, "Eighteen."

"Do you want to be a jounin?" Sakura asked, hoping she wasn't being too nosy. But she was also trying to subtly change the topic of the conversation. She…didn't want to talk about _him_.

The other girl shrugged. "I'm not interested in titles—only in serving my village as fully as I can."

For the first time since she had met her, Sakura found Noriko's demeanor to be entirely serious.

"Anyway," Noriko coughed, strange expression vanishing to reveal another, bright smile, "I bet the copy-nin taught you _so_ many things."

"Not at all."

"Why not?"

"Apparently," Sakura said stoically, "I didn't look like I could take it."

* * *

Despite the rain, they somehow managed to make better pace the next day. Or, perhaps, it was because they were less concerned about leaving obvious tracks and were able to forgo doubling back maneuvers that they made better pace.

It wasn't until they were close to the pick-up location that Sakura noticed her temporary teammates begin to act strangely. Reizo, who had been slumped over and lackadaisical until then, suddenly became alert. Noriko as well—whose smile seemed a permanent fixture on her face—grew grim, palming the handle of her chokuto almost anxiously. Only Torio remained just as he had before.

Sakura straightened as well as they neared the small palace. She hadn't expected them to be the type of team that took an escort mission so seriously, but it was a good model to follow by principle, she supposed.

"This is the plan," Torio announced. They were shadowed by trees next to the entrance of the palace. The palace seemed to tower in the foreground, a white and red architectural masterpiece that glistened under the pelting of the rain.

Sakura returned her attention back to Torio as he continued. "Noriko, you enter through the third level, Reizo, the second, and I'll take the ground level. Haruno, you wait at the entrance in case we need to make a quick escape with the princess—keep watch and make sure to misdirect anyone entering."

Sakura frowned. "You're infiltrating? I thought this was supposed to be a simple pick-up and drop-off."

"We received new intel," Reizo said curtly.

"What did it say?"

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find Noriko grinning at her. "Don't worry about it, Sakura-chan. We got this. Just stay here and everything will be fine."

The taller girl nodded at her and then shunshined away, followed shortly by the other two shinobi. Sakura sighed heavily and slumped against the tree, a dark scowl on her face. The water had turned the ground into slushy mud, the thick scent prominent of it nullifying everything else. The scent of dirt in Konoha was much sweeter, she thought arrogantly to herself.

Minutes passed. As she saw civilians near the entrance of the palace, she cast a simple, quick genjutsu that led them astray.

 _I smell blood_ , the Voice crooned.

Sakura continued flipping her kunai, gritting her teeth. "You're imagining it."

 _Maybe._ The Voice laughed nastily in her head. _It's been so long since I've smelled real blood other than our own._

A crow cawed somewhere behind her and Sakura flinched, gaze darting through the thick nesting of trees. Suddenly, the slight uncomfortable feeling she had been ignoring had ballooned, and she grabbed her kunai tightly.

Something _was_ wrong. When she thought about it—the way Torio, Noriko, and Reizo had acted had not only been unusual; it had also been against protocol. If they had received new information, why had she not been made aware of it? And pointedly, she had been with them the entire time. She would have noticed a messenger hawk.

Torio, Noriko, and Reizo had decided that this mission would require infiltration when the assignment itself had said nothing of it.

That didn't bode well. With this acknowledgment, other odd facts she had previously dismissed began to stick out glaringly. Noriko's lack of shock at her genin team status—as though she was unaware of Konoha's shinobi system. Torio's inexplicable neck pains, though he should have been well-acclimated to perching on trees in Konoha.

Sakura gritted her teeth.

In a flash, she disappeared from the tree and reappeared at the palace entrance. The large protruding roof sheltered her from the rain, allowing the smells from within to permeate the air around her. Pushing the door open slightly, kunai clenched in hand, she entered the grand entrance of the building and stiffened. Dead bodies—guards, she catalogued—lined the double staircase leading up to the second floor.

Bending, she checked the pulse of the first guard. Nothing. All of the guards had been stabbed at vital points—savagely and deeply.

 _There's more,_ the Voice chanted, _There's more! Go up! There's more!_

For a seemingly eternal moment, Sakura was overwhelmed by the mindless panic flooding through her veins. Terror pulsed through her bloodstream and rendered her limbs stiff and immobile. She was an infinitesimal step away from succumbing to her fear—the magnitude of what had happened in the park, of what was happening again, threatening to bury her under an intangible weight.

For a moment, it was almost as though she had. But then, a strange sense of unreality washed over her. And she straightened almost robotically and made her way up the staircase with her chakra suppressed.

As she approached the landing, she could hear the fighting grow increasingly more defined—short, sharp metallic clangs, gasps and cries, abrupt silences.

At the second level, she found Reizo and Torio cutting down both armed guards along with what were clearly civilian servants and maids.

A hand grasped her foot, and Sakura looked down to see a maid with a gaping wound in her stomach. "Please," she gasped, pretty features contorted in pain. She spluttered some blood and passed away.

Sakura's mind was blank—preternaturally cool and calm. And the Voice breathed heavily in her mind, otherwise oddly silent.

She closed the gap between her and the foreign shinobi with lightning quickness. Reizo's head snapped up just as she lunged with her kunai, slashing neatly through the tendon in his arm with medical accuracy, rendering it useless. As she did so, she met Torio's gaze and made rapid hand signs with her other hand, casting him under a genjutsu.

Reizo swung at her with his one working arm, hand adorned by bladed knuckles that were charged with chakra. She evaded his blows with ease, body moving instinctively from hours of sweat and blood. Sakura had been trained by a crow with a sharingan whose shadow shinobi moved a lot quicker than these nin.

"Who are you?" Sakura interrogated lifelessly, kunai flashing through the air. When they met flesh, it was at strategic locations designed to cause heavy bleeding that would weaken him but not kill him—she still needed him to speak.

Reizo gazed back at her coolly. "You were supposed to wait outside."

"So that you could kill me at the end," she interpreted.

"You're not the only one who has been lying, Haruno," Reizo accused, lips peeling back to reveal bared teeth. "You're no genin, are you? Was the Hokage onto us from the beginning?"

He made rapid hand signs and barbed, metal chains exploded from him. One rammed into Sakura's side, causing pain to lance through her. With fierce concentration, she maintained the genjutsu on Torio and wove her way through the chains with ruthless efficiency. In seconds, Sakura stood a foot from him and her kunai sank into the older boy's throat.

 _Like a knife through butter_ , the Voice moaned, orgasmic pleasure laced through its voice.

The dying shinobi choked out a curse and blood. It landed on her face.

Blood. Real blood.

Sakura reached up to wipe it away with a trembling hand, gaze unseeing.

But she snapped to attention when her head collided into the wall beside her with brutish force. Sakura's eyes flashed open, regretting the moment of carelessness as she found Torio's livid form in front of her.

He was a block of muscle as he came at her with powerful jabs and kicks. If one of them landed as intended, the muscle and bone underneath her skin could easily crumble. But Torio didn't know what Sakura's seemingly insignificant muscle definition belied.

Blocking both arms with a raised forearm, she concentrated chakra into her left hand and planted it in the other boy's chest, right between his ribs, right in front of his heart. She felt the flesh and bone _bend_ beneath her knuckles, felt bone crush into his heart, felt the squelch of blood exploding from the rapidly beating muscle.

Like an oversized rag doll, he crumpled on himself and slid to the ground.

The remaining alive on the floor whispered their fervent gratitude to her, watching fearfully all the while in case her mission was to attack them too. But Sakura paid them no attention. There was one more left—on the third floor.

Closing her eyes and channeling chakra into her ears, she heard panicked cries in the northwest corner of the third floor and set off. Dead bodies lining the hall of the third level blurred past her, a gory landscape, and she reached at last a large pair of brass doors—the entrance, she guessed, to the princess's living quarters.

There was no time for subterfuge or a covert entrance. She slammed the doors open and attached herself to the ceiling, knowing that a shinobi's first instinct would be to send shuriken and send them low.

As she gazed down, she found a scene that matched the level below in brutality. Ladies in waiting were strewn all along the grandiose room, their blood painting the walls in an uncaring pattern. The only living civilian left was a dark haired, beautiful woman with tearing blue eyes. Poised at the smooth, unblemished arch of the princess's throat was the razor-sharp edge of Noriko's chokuto.

"Sakura-chan," the redheaded shinobi greeted almost pleasantly.

"Noriko-san." After a moment, Sakura dropped from the ceiling and landed in a crouch, straightening quickly.

The grinning girl looked at her with curiosity. "If you had waited outside, there was a chance you could have survived this. Now, I have no choice."

Sakura's lips tightened. "If you're going to kill me, can't you at least tell me why?"

 _Just kill her_ , the Voice raged, prowling restlessly in her mind.

Noriko tilted her head, eyes flashing. "Because I hate Konoha. And when the Mizukage offered me this mission, I took it _gladly._ "

Noriko's chokuto flashed through the air as she raced forward. Sakura ducked, missing the first swipe just barely. Twirling the kunai in her hands, she maneuvered them to block the sharp blade of the thin sword.

"What has Konoha done to you?" Sakura asked, steeling herself for the next swing of the blade. Anger and— _no, no, it wasn't there—_ anguish bled into her tone; against her will, her numbness was beginning to fade.

Noriko was strong. Much stronger than the other two shinobi had been. And she had thought—Sakura had thought they had been _friends._ Unbidden, an irrational, childish hurt stung in her chest.

"You should ask your _Copy-nin_ ," Noriko hissed, lashing out with her foot. Sakura felt her pulse spike at the moniker and forcibly cloaked herself in impersonal detachment once more.

That would explain why she had been oddly knowledgeable of Kakashi alone.

Sakura's kunai crossed under Noriko's blade, locking it in place. "And how exactly did he hurt you?"

Noriko yanked herself back with a dark laugh. " _I've_ never met him before."

Sakura's lack of comprehension flashed across her face. At the back of her mind, she considered how to end the fight quickly without putting the princess at risk—ninjutsu was useless here. And Noriko had yet to make eye contact, unfortunately wary of genjutsu. She was forced to step back again, side stepping the other girl's deadly swipes.

"I fail to see why we're here, then," Sakura snapped, "if he did nothing."

Noriko's face contorted into something almost inhuman with the force of her immense anger. She gave a dark, tortured laugh. " _Nothing_?"

Sakura's smooth rhythm of feint then lunge faltered at the sight of the other girl's face. Her eyes were wet, shining with rigidly kept back tears, lips twisted in a vicious snarl.

 _"_ He murdered her!"

Following this confession, the savagery of Noriko's kenjutsu increased tenfold. "He left her body there…to be eaten by the vultures...a hole in her chest…they couldn't touch her… _I couldn't touch her_ …because her body was so charged with electricity…"

Sakura's body was on autopilot now, avoiding the weapon mindlessly while her mind processed the words confessed to her. A year ago, she would have bent over with nausea at this revelation.

"Her face was charred off," Noriko whispered, tears streaming now openly. "She was an ANBU captain, and he mowed her down, one out of a hundred, as though she were _nothing_."

"I'm sorry," Sakura said softly. She feinted again and lashed out with her kunai. In the other girl's grief, she managed to sever a vein in her leg. She would lose all feeling in it soon.

"Your apology means nothing," Noriko raged, speed decreasing as her body succumbed to the wound. She mustered a garish, sad smile. "I liked you, you know? I was going to tell them to let you live. But then you told me you were _his_ student."

"I can't let you live, Sakura-chan," she continued, "You understand, don't you? I have to kill you—for her."

The Voice was spitting fury in her mind, bemoaning how long it was taking, how little blood there was, but Sakura ignored it. Turmoil broiled within her. Organ traffickers and faceless genjustu shinobi and—Noriko. It—it wasn't a matched set.

Noriko released a war cry that sounded more like a wail of grief, driving her blade to the left and then switching midway to slash it diagonally to the right.

Eyes stinging, Sakura felt the edge of the chokuto to bite into her shoulder. If Noriko had been uninjured and calm, this would have been suicide for Sakura. But with one leg numb, Noriko was slow to muster the force to pull it back.

Sakura grasped the blade and used the wall to kick off, wrapping her legs around the other girl's neck. Hanging upside down— _finish it, finish it,_ the Voice urged—she dragged her kunai upward from stomach to chest. Deep; dangerously deep.

With a thick squelch, Sakura pulled the metal weapons out and pushed off of her. She tied the other girl's hands together to prevent her from forming any hand signs and then stepped back. Noriko buckled to her knees, looking down at her wounds in seeming shock.

"Here," Sakura commanded the princess urgently. "Gather your necessary valuables in that"—she pointed to an embroidered messenger bag sitting on the bed, half-filled probably from previous packing—"We will depart shortly."

Nodding shakily, the princess ran to her dresser to gather a few small objects, a pouch of money, and a change of clothes, and placed them in the sack. Sakura bent to lift the princess so that they could jump through the window, thus avoiding the carnage decorating the levels below, but they were stopped by a sharp command.

"Finish it!" Noriko demanded.

 _Finish it,_ the Voice echoed remorselessly.

Sakura paused, then straightened. "You'll survive," she clarified, in case the other girl thought she had been left to suffer a slow death. "As soon as you work out that knot and get to the nearest healer, you'll be fine. But I can't promise you won't have breathing problems from now on."

Yet, her words only seemed to enrage Noriko more. The anger quickly fractured. "I can't live like this," Noriko panted, breath hitching with hysteria, "I couldn't even kill you—how will I be able to kill him, when _she_ couldn't? Just finish it. Let me see her again."

Sakura's face was numb. Her hands no longer felt like her own as she gazed at them—in consideration? She couldn't. No. She bent down again to pick up the princess.

She made it to the window this time.

"If you have any respect for me," Noriko hissed, forcing her to stop, "if anything I said to you or was for you in the last twenty-four hours meant anything to you, _you will do it_. You owe me that much."

 _Let me out,_ the Voice breathed. _Let me do it! I'll do it for you!_

Sakura wished she had left without listening. Her fingers trembled around the princess's slim legs.

"Don't make me beg," Noriko choked out.

Sakura let out a low, almost inaudible whimper. Then, slowly, she put the princess back down and turned. Noriko looked back at her, brown eyes wide and agonized. The other girl's features relaxed as she read Sakura's decision on her face. Had she thought the smile natural on Noriko's face? Sakura could see now that it had been forced the entire time.

It was Sakura, not the Voice, who stepped forward, angling her kunai to slash across the other girl's throat. She stopped when Noriko spoke with soft urgency.

"Not like that," the Mist nin rasped, "With the chokuto. It was hers."

Sakura picked up the fallen sword and held it directly above her heart.

"She also had green—" were Noriko's last words.

Sakura plunged the sword down with chakra-induced strength to make the blow quick. The marble floor below her cracked. Noriko was dead immediately. The princess let out a soft cry from her position at the window. Sakura spared her a short glance, before pulling the chokuto out from the body beneath it.

She held it in her hand for a long moment. Sakura didn't pause to consider her actions. She pulled the scabbard from girl's waist and sheathed the sword, before swinging it over her shoulder.

She picked up the princess and then leapt through the window.

* * *

Sakura carried the princess—Mako, she was reminded—a considerable distance with the sunlight that was left. When nightfall halted their journey, with the princess's monetary resources, a henge on herself, and a change in clothing for the princess (purchased from a vendor several villages back), they stopped to spend the night in an inn.

"Take a bath," Sakura told Mako stiffly. "I'll go down and get some food for the both of us. I'll leave a bunshin here to watch over you."

The young woman nodded at her, face still pale from what had happened earlier in the day. Understandable—in less than ten minutes, she had probably seen her closest companions get mercilessly killed.

Sakura made her way down the wooden staircase to the ground floor: a functional pub that served both alcohol and food. Her footsteps landed heavier than usual to suit the henge of the stocky, brown-haired man she donned (two civilian women traveling alone drew unwanted attention). When she reached the pub, she found it decently populated. She walked to the wooden counter and ordered two bowls of white rice and vegetables.

As she waited, a woman with grey lines in her hair sat down on the platform at the front of the pub, koto in her lap. She seemed unaffected by the jeers of the inebriated in the pub and began strumming the strings of the koto. The voice that emerged was older than the woman looked—thick and cracked. "In search of new lands, I build a new house. I thatch the house with reed stalks, gathered neatly in bundles."

Sakura's brows furrowed.

"I wish to dress my children and loved ones… in the one kimono that I own. As for me, I will wear vines… that I plucked deep in the mountains."

Without warning, Noriko's dying face flashed through her mind. Sakura turned away from the singer immediately. She pointed at the premium sake the pub owner advertised and swallowed it in one go. She coughed violently afterward, but even that wasn't enough to drown out the next words.

"The light of the full moon shines down, illuminating the world with its divine light," the singer crooned, "When my lover sneaks in to visit me, I wish that the clouds would hide that light just a little."

"It's a folk song called Obokuri Eeumi," the woman beside her sighed, gaze fixed on the singer. "She sings it every week."

Sakura's expression was blank. She gathered the bowls that had just been placed in front of her and left the counter to go back upstairs.

She had thought, foolishly, that the crow had beat the tears out of her.

* * *

As though ignorant of how it had started, the rest of the mission passed without a single hitch. Sakura delivered the shaken princess to her betrothed in the Land of Wind the next day and immediately began travelling back to Konoha. Without the princess's finances, she spent the nights in trees and left a bunshin to keep watch. It was the sort of isolation she needed, though, to pretend that what she had done would sit right with her one day. One day—when Noriko's face would be but a blur in her memory.

Her isolation was disturbed half way back by the crow's appearance.

(One moment, it was endless green before her; the next, she was in the ever-familiar world of red and black feathers that Shisui most often chose for its genjutsus.)

"You should have noticed they were foreign earlier."

Sakura's shoulders tensed at the implication in those words.

"Were they even shinobi from the Mist?" she asked tonelessly, a storm brewing unseen. "What a story: an eighteen year-old girl's lover killed by my former jounin captain. A resulting, mad quest for vengeance, only to end in failure and tragedy."

"Oh, she was real. They all were." The crow flapped its wings. "The only genjutsu I applied was to keep that infiltration team from discovery by the ANBU and getting you on the mission."

Sakura's chest burned. "Why— _why did you it_?"

"To teach you a lesson," Shisui returned indifferently. "As always."

Sakura stared down at the crow. Could it kill her if it wanted? No, she remembered, the contract prevented that. Everything the crow did was in the name of teaching her to survive, well within the limits of the contract. A terrible, humorless joke.

She yanked her gaze away, face tight.

"Bring the chokuto with you tomorrow," it commanded.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Please leave kudos and a comment!**


	6. Chapter 6: A Year Later

**A YEAR LATER**

* * *

Sakura was in desperate need of a shower.

"I've got blood all over me," the ANBU in front of her sighed.

"Same," the woman behind her muttered, "I don't know how I'm ever going to wash this out."

The leader of their squad, a short, stocky man, glanced back at Sakura. "I think Crow is going to have the most trouble tonight."

As the squad of ten ANBUs laughed around her, Sakura's gaze flicked down to survey her blood splattered form with forced stoicism. Almost there, she reminded herself. Three hours and they would be back in Konoha. Then, she could burn the clothes. And sleep. And get up for another session with the crow. And then probably be maneuvered into another soul-crushing ANBU mission.

She scowled beneath her mask.

"You've got to tell me what gets you so revved up," the ANBU with the rat mask said, swinging his arm over her shoulder. "Fucked up childhood? Abusive relationship?"

Sakura removed herself from the hold in her next leap through the thick cluster of trees.

"Well, you don't kill like that unless there's _something_ ," someone else said, voice low and knowing.

Sakura never thought she would have wished for the newcomer ANBUs from her first mission a month ago again, who were so indoctrinated with protocol that they scarcely said a word to each other the entire mission. Unfortunately, this squad consisted of mostly well-experienced ANBU. And apparently, experienced ANBU were obnoxious.

"Leave her alone," a softer, quieter voice interrupted. Sakura turned and saw blue eyes staring at her though a rabbit mask.

"Yeah, yeah," rat mask scoffed. For a brief period of time, the conversation lapsed into blissful silence. But then his gaze shifted to the coyote ANBU—the shinobi who had stopped the previous discussion. "You're another newbie, aren't you?"

"Yes, senpai."

"How old are you?"

Coyote didn't answer immediately. After a moment: "I believe disclosing my age is against protocol."

"Seventeen, I'd guess," Snake cut in, a smug tone to her voice. "His voice's broken but not fully deepened yet. Look at him—what a bean pole."

"Looks like all the new recruits are," another ANBU observed. "Crow isn't much better."

"I thought she was a man at first," the rat ANBU snickered, "Not quite sure she doesn't actually have a dick, if I'm honest."

At any other time, Sakura would have simply sneered. But there was blood from more people than she could count on her clothes, she hadn't slept in over thirty hours, all she really wanted to do was go home and knock herself into unconsciousness, and this idiot wouldn't _shut up_ about her.

"If I did, senpai, you can be sure it's bigger than yours."

The ANBU stiffened beside her abruptly. The rest of the ANBU paused in reaction, a well-oiled machine, positioned at various odd points among the trees.

But Sakura was beyond being concerned. Of course, it wasn't _really_ Rat that was the source of the fury broiling inside her (she knew that). Rat was simply: the vent. One she would gladly use.

She straightened to her henge's full height—the same as her own height, but the henge had a slightly wirier build—a few centimeters above him. When Sakura saw the ANBU's eyes narrow, she began to move to her chokuto in a slow, warning movement.

"Calm down, Rat, Crow," their leader muttered. "We don't have time—"

He was cut off by a kunai to the throat.

The ANBU stared at each other for a fraction of a second, before shunshining to different positions just as a rain of shuriken landed in their former positions.

"Coyote, hang back!" Snake shouted, taking charge as second-in-command. She made hand signals that directed the rest of the team into strategic positions cloaked by foliage.

Sakura crouched behind Tiger in the lower branches of a giant Japanese maple. She couldn't sense any chakra in the vicinity—either of those on her squad or of enemy-nin. Clearly testing the waters, Snake leapt from her hidden position to another and then immediately shunshined again. The branch she had last placed her feet on was severed by a huge, invisible ax an instant after she left.

"They're invisible?" Tiger whispered incredulously.

Rat and another ANBU leapt out, now, but they weren't as quick as Snake. The invisible shinobi—there was no telling how many of them—swiped at the two shinobi, their actions only observable through the blood leaking from the ANBUs and the rush of air as they maneuvered their weapons.

"Genjutsu," Sakura breathed with abrupt certainty. It had to be. They had cast a complex genjutsu that made them indistinguishable from their surroundings—hence why none of them were using ninjutsu or it would disrupt the flow of chakra maintaining the delicate illusion.

"The rest need to know," Tiger muttered. "But we can't use hand signs if they can't see us."

Sakura made a split-second decision, ignoring the way Tiger's eyes widened at her and seemed to scream ' _don't_.' She shunshined away from her position and landed in the middle of a clearing where she was certain everyone would be able to see her.

She barely had time to make the hand signals for 'genjutsu,' before Sakura felt movement in the air beside her. Paying attention to the sounds, she moved instinctively to avoid the swipes of blades. A blade soon glanced her midsection, however, and she realized that evasion wouldn't be enough, not with more and more invisible shinobi congregating around her.

She dug her fingers into the wound on her stomach, but her efforts did not amount to anything. Gritting her teeth, Sakura sent a surge of chakra to the pain receptors in her body instead. The result was a jolt of the most mind-numbing pain she had ever felt in her life—even for a fraction of a second, it was almost impossible not to pass out.

When she blearily opened her eyes again, she could see just barely the outlines—a sort of shimmery mirage—of figures racing silently through the trees, many with projections that looked like blades. The genjutsu must have been incredibly layered, that she hadn't broken through all of it even with that.

But it was enough.

 _Let me do it,_ the Voice whispered to her, words thick with excitement. Counting the number of figures and the brutality it would require, Sakura's lips tightened. She hadn't allowed the Voice out, but it _had_ proven somewhat more manageable after being given some tightly-reined freedom. And Sakura would take it out for walks, like a domesticated canine, if that's what it took to keep it relatively compliant within a leash.

After brief consideration, and she wasn't entirely sure if it was hers or the Voice's, Sakura felt herself fade from the present—

—and was stunned when she returned to consciousness with enemy bodies strewn across the forest floor, but significantly more still alive around her.

Had the Voice _given up_?

Sakura exhaled sharply, hand tightening on her chokuto as her surroundings filtered in once more.

What had happened? She had thought she had—

 _A deafening, high-pitched noise pierced the air, and with a roar of enraged betrayal, the Voice felt itself being dragged back and back and back and back—_

She knew that sound. Like birds, but louder. Crouching low on her branch, her eyes widened as she saw an ANBU not part of her squad blur toward them with unbelievable speed, a bolt of lightning crackling in his hand.

Just as he passed her, time seemed to lose any meaning, slowing to a sluggish pace. And Sakura's heart stopped in her chest, because she could have sworn that for an instant, the pair of black and red eyes met hers.

Then, he was a blur once more, his hand plunging through chest after chest. Sakura's breath froze; even the Voice was silent, carefully watching the massacre occurring before them. That was exactly what it was: a massacre. At the speed he was moving, the shinobi had no chance of surviving. They didn't even have a chance to react before the blood burst from them.

A minute later, the twisted pile of bodies the Voice had assembled was double in size. Silence rang around them.

 _He killed her— monster!_ For the first time in a long while, she heard Noriko's voice echo through her head, clear like a bell.

Sakura swallowed, the action producing a sharp pain in her dry throat.

Four more ANBU, two brown-haired men, a blonde woman, and a black-haired woman, flashed into existence beside the man's now lazily slouched form, flanking him.

The former second-in-command, now leader, of Sakura's squad stepped forward, shoulders stiff. He bowed sharply. "Taichou."

The other ANBU on her squad fell into line beside him. Belatedly, Sakura joined them at the very end. She postponed an incredulous consideration of her luck—of all the squads, after two years of no contact, now hers was the one to run into _him_?— to scan her teammates, noting some severe but largely manageable injuries. Coyote, the squad's designated medic-nin, would be able to handle them.

"We expected more fatalities," the dark-haired woman of the newly arrived squad spoke, voice a monotone.

"We were attacked approximately ten minutes ago—"

"Your mid-level squad accomplished this in ten minutes?" the brown-haired man wearing a bear mask pressed harshly.

It took a moment for Sakura to realize that all her teammates' gazes were now accusingly on her. Her face formed a snarl beneath her mask; they were going to shatter any hopes of anonymity she would have hoped to have maintained in front of this particular audience.

"Crow did it, taichou," Rat spoke up, his voice a nasally rasp from what was undoubtedly a mild chest injury. "She killed every single one of those shinobi before you arrived."

Fucking _rat_. Her muscles tightened as her former captain's gaze fell on her. She didn't know how she could have ever been blind to it before. How had she ever thought him a lackadaisical, unobservant shinobi? She could sense his presently _obvious_ lethality on a cellular level. Aggression and killing intent permeated from him, fully unleashed. Sakura's eyes widened before she forced herself to calm down instead of darting away and trying her luck with fleeing.

A second later, he was directly in front of her. She kept her head bowed, using the pretense of rank and formality to avoid his gaze.

"Remove your mask."

Sakura stiffened. "That's against protocol, taichou."

Without warning, she felt a gloved hand yank her head up until she was looking directly into his eyes. Daring her to resist, he raised his other hand and pulled her mask off, revealing the nondescript features of her henge: tanned skin, thin brown hair, and dark eyes.

"How did someone inconsequential like you kill so many?" Kakashi questioned with feral interest, the metallic scent of blood wafting off of him as he leaned closer. His hand was almost choking her.

Sakura's eyes almost bugged out at his demeanor. He was nothing like the Kakashi she had known, and yet, perhaps the compilation of every deviance in personality, every note or look that had ever struck her as suspicious, as too _sharp_ , from before. Menacing and terrifying, his presence crackled through the immediate area like the electricity he had just produced. The peaceful atmosphere that always arose after a battle won—no matter how devastating the cost—fractured in the face of it, driving every shinobi around to be on-guard as though the bloodshed was still impending.

"I'm a genjutsu user," Sakura bit out against the painful, calloused hold. She ignored the way her heart raced in her chest, aware of what those hands had accomplished. He wore the ANBU uniform like a second skin, the pale span of his actual skin visible only at his muscled upper arms, which were exposed between his flak jacket and elbow length arm guards, and his hands—which were on her. "I wasn't able to dispel the genjutsu entirely, but…enough."

Kakashi's gaze passed over her form and the amount of blood splattered on her. "Had fun, did you?" he mocked.

Her body stiffened at the accusation. He felt it immediately. His body became flush with hers. And now, Sakura _did_ feel her eyes bug out, at the roughness of the deadly form so close to her, at how intimately she could sense what could brutalize her.

"Your name," he demanded gutturally into her ear.

"Saori," she hissed when his hand tightened warningly. Her anger bled into her voice. "Saori Mori."

Like a hound scenting blood, Kakashi reacted to her hostility, pressing closer. "Do you have a problem, Saori Mori?"

Sakura wanted to laugh loudly in his face.

"You've made me break two of ANBU's first-level rules. And I want you to get off me."

Around her, her teammates looked at her like she had gone insane. Rat seemed to vibrate with excitement at her impending fortune. Fucker, she thought poisonously.

He stepped back and swept a cold, dismissive look over her team. "Get back to Konoha and debrief."

Sakura spun and left without a second look, palms fisted and trembling at her sides.

* * *

"You have perfect chakra control—use it. If you maximize the efficiency of your chakra-use, you will be toe-to-toe with opponents of even the greatest chakra reserves."

Sakura ducked a fist encased in volatile chakra and flipped over a spinning kick from another opponent, trying her best to forget everything that had happened the previous day.

After two and a half years, after no contact, she had seen him— _like that_ —

Blood on her clothes. Wash. Scrub. Rinse. Repeat.

"Didn't you say I was a genjutsu user?" she bit out, making fast hand signs to release a water dragon that collided through ten of the shinobi. "When are you going to teach me advanced genjutsu?"

"I have already taught you some genjutsu," the crow answered calmly, watching the battle below with unreadable eyes. "Anything beyond what you currently know will require you refining your precision in chakra consumption so that perfection is instinctive."

Sakura snarled and exhaled high pressure streams from her mouth, skewering the rest of the faceless shinobi remaining around her. "And then I'll be able to make genjutsus like yours?"

"That would require the sharingan," Shisui answered coolly. "You will need to summon me before you can place anyone under this level of genjutsu."

"Convenient," Sakura muttered. With the shinobi remaining, she unsheathed the chokuto and charged forward, edging the blade with her chakra. As the crow had promised, it had 'taught' her how to use the weapon—primarily by conjuring shinobi to pummel her until she learned to move correctly.

Learning the chokuto, though, had come in use in the missions Sakura had been assigned in the past year. Of course, that had been Shisui's influence as well. Ever since the crow had determined missions could also be used as lessons, it had continued to influence the assignments handed to her.

She didn't know how it was possible—the level of duplicity required, let alone the pervasiveness of genjutsu required. Yet, the crow had maneuvered her into harder and harder missions. And Sakura was sixteen, now, and tall—even without a henge, she did not overtly appear unusual on these missions despite her true rank (she had, incredibly enough, managed to miss the chunin exams twice more and so was still technically a genin).

She blinked, distracted from her thoughts, as the shinobi surrounding her suddenly vanished. Her gaze went to the crow warily.

Shisui cocked its head to the side in visible annoyance. "Someone is approaching."

It turned its gaze to fix one, glowing red eye on her. The genjutsu released its hold on her and Sakura found herself standing alone on the rundown training ground she had made her own over the past two and a half years.

Footsteps, increasing in volume with considerable speed, sounded behind her and she turned to find three figures racing toward her. She slipped her kunai back into her flak jacket. It was the boy who had followed Naruto around all the time—he and his genin teammates.

"Oy," the boy shouted loudly, "He's back! Naruto nichan is back!"

He turned and pointed upward. Sakura followed his finger to find a lone figure standing on top of a tall wooden pole, above the buildings surrounding him, a good distance away. The figure's back was facing her but she knew that it was Naruto.

Sakura bent her knees and sent chakra to her legs. When she opened her eyes again, she stood in front of the tall pole, her hair settling around her belatedly from the sudden burst of speed.

Her gaze flicked to her right. Jiraiya stood beside her.

"Naruto," the sannin bellowed, "Get down!"

"Yeah, yeah," the heard the familiar, abrasive voice bellow back, only slightly lower than it had been two years ago. But when Sakura examined his face, she found a solemner expression as her former teammate surveyed his village.

After one long look, Naruto took a casual step off the top of the pole. When he landed on the ground, his gaze immediately found Sakura.

Neither of them said anything at first. Sakura took her time to survey the boy who had annoyed her so much in the Academy and later on Team Seven, and he did the same in turn. Like before, whatever thoughts arose from his perusal were visible on his face. Chagrin at her height—she was still taller than he was. Surprise—at her clothing, she guessed; Sakura's pants and loose shirt hid the slight but definite muscle definition she had gained. It hadn't occurred to her, but she supposed she did look very different from before he had left. She no longer wore the dress—and she had once loved that dress, she supposed.

Naruto had abandoned his ridiculous—and impractical—neon orange and dark blue jumpsuit for something only slightly less ridiculous. He had also grown taller and broader in the shoulders. But the biggest change she could find was in his now pensive demeanor.

This impression subsided when his face cracked into a familiar crooked grin. "Sakura-chan!"

"Naruto."

His gaze shifted to behind her and his grin remained. "Konohamaru!"

 _That_ had been the boy's name. Sakura turned and found Konohamaru gasping for breath with his two teammates just behind him.

"Boss!" the younger boy panted. "How've you been? Also look! Look! I perfected it!"

He made quick hand signs and a buxom brunette appeared before them, intimates barely covered by bits of mist. Jiraiya choked beside her.

Naruto scoffed loudly, the gesture exaggerated and overblown like a kabuki actor's. "I've moved beyond such low-level jutsu. Check _this_ out!"

His hands met in rapid formations and multiple women popped into existence. Despite the unique features of each women, they all shared one thing in common—nudity.

Jiraiya's grin was wide and greedy until he seemed to remember Sakura was there. "Run, Naruto," he informed the other gravely. "If she's anything like her mentor, you won't be living much longer."

Naruto's gaze shot to her with trepidation. Sakura viewed the generous bosoms of the women with indifference and not a little medical skepticism.

"Boss," Konohamaru chirped, "the gang and I have to head back to meet up with Ebisu-sensei! But we'll catch up later!"

As Naruto waved them away, Jiraiya spoke up again. "And that's our cue to see Tsunade."

Sakura blinked slowly. She had purposefully left bottles of sake all around Tsunade's office the previous night so that she could sleep in a little before her training with the crow. "She drank heavily last night," she said after a pause. "She'll probably be passed out for another hour."

Jiraiya clearly knew the hokage well, because he didn't seem surprised. "Let's meet at her office at sundown, in that case."

Naruto straightened excitedly. "Want to eat at Ichiraku Ramen, ero-sennin? They have the best ramen in all of Konoha—no—in all the great five shinobi nations!"

"No way," Jiraiya scoffed loudly. "I'm heading to the bathhouse to sample some of Konoha's…fairer offerings. Catch you later."

He disappeared with a pop, leaving Naruto and Sakura alone. With a complex expression, Naruto reached at his side and pulled out his frog wallet. Sakura noticed that when he jostled it, it made no noise.

Naruto caught her looking at him and immediately beamed widely. "Ah, it's so great to be back. I can't even wait to see Tsunade-bachan and—"

"You know," Sakura interrupted, "I'm feeling a little hungry. Let's go."

His eyes bugged, before lowering. "Ahh, I can't. Gama-chan is empty, see?" He squished the wallet demonstratively.

"I'll cover it," Sakura said, already setting off in direction of the restaurant. But she didn't hear footsteps follow her, so she was forced to turn around again. Naruto gazed back at her in utter amazement.

"Hey, Sakura-chan," Naruto asked dazedly, "are you asking me out on a d—"

"No. We're—were—teammates, and we're grabbing a meal together."

"Okay," Naruto said easily. And strangely, his expression did not change—as though her offer of companionship was all he had really been after in the first place.

Sakura frowned as they made their way to the finest ramen establishment in Konoha. Ayame took their order and conveyed it to Teuchi, who prepared their meal behind her. Naruto settled into the stool beside her with a groan, inhaling the smell of the restaurant with great satisfaction.

"How've you been?" he asked after they had settled down. The blue eyes that looked at her were serious now. Sakura wasn't able to stare into them for very long, inevitably averting her gaze under such piercing examination.

"Fine. It's been fine," she said shortly. She quickly shifted the topic of conversation. "Tell me. What did you learn while you were away?"

It was a fortunate thing that even three ANBU missions paid a mini-fortune or Sakura probably would have been eaten out of her house with the amount of ramen Naruto consumed in between enthusiastic retellings of his adventures.

She leaned forward and listened with determined intentness to Naruto's wild tales of narrow escapes and grueling training and rasengan developments and editing Icha Icha drafts. It was endless chatter, perhaps for the first time welcomed.

A month ago, the crow had managed to place Sakura on her first ANBU mission, and even after two more, the memories of the dead and the dying undeniably had yet to lose their hold on her: kept her scrubbing her skin in the shower for longer than she realized, made her burn the clothes she had worn each time, made her fingers spasm each time she reached for her blade—

"And then, it _EXPLODED!"_ Naruto wiped his mouth with a blissed-out groan. Sakura gazed outside and found a thin sliver of the sun resting above the horizon.

"We should head to the tower," she commented, placing down the money. Naruto nodded distractedly, rubbing his protruding stomach lazily.

Given Naruto's condition, they decided to walk there instead of employing chakra. Just as the thin sliver of gold disappeared, the two entered the building and made their way up the spiraling levels to the top level, where the hokage's office was situated.

They found Jiraiya already there, leering at the golden-haired woman sitting at her desk. Tsunade's attention moved instantly to the newcomers of her office. As she saw Naruto, her stern expression melted into a reluctantly fond smile.

"So, you're finally back. A little more grown up too, I hope?"

Naruto struck a pose, thumbs up. "Believe it!"

"Willing to bet on it?" the Godaime challenged, teeth bared. The golden gaze unexpectedly snapped to her.

Sakura shrugged. "Sure. I'll place money opposite whatever you gamble on."

Tsunade glared viciously. "Brat," she chewed out. She leaned back into her chair and surveyed them both over her intertwined hands.

"Do you think I would have come back, if I had not come back with results?" Jiraiya interjected into the silence silkily.

Tsunade met this proclamation with a sly smile on her lips. "If that's the case: I want to see these 'results' as soon as possible."

Sakura watched as Naruto straightened beside her, a fierce expression on his face. He looked ready to battle any monster Tsunade might decide to summon before him.

"I'm placing you two back on a team," the Godaime barked commandingly.

"Really?" Naruto asked eagerly, almost vibrating with excitement.

"Despite his position and usefulness in ANBU, I've called him back to Konoha yesterday precisely for this reason." There was a mean grin on Tsunade's face.

" _Who_?"

"Come in!" Tsunade called out, savage smile widening.

A figure blurred into existence in the room.

"Maa," the figure that had caused Naruto to pale and pull out his kunai drawled. "Is that anyway to greet your old sensei?"

* * *

Sakura's palms broke into a cold sweat. Her mouth—conversely—dried almost painfully.

She should have suspected this, that Tsunade might call Team Seven back together now that Naruto was back. It was exactly the sentimental kind of thing she had learned her mentor was inclined to do. Rationalization, however, did not help temper her visceral reaction to Kakashi's presence in front of her for the second time in twenty four hours after two and a half years.

Sakura's teeth bit into the side of her cheek.

 _Haruno Sakura is unsuited to become a shinobi._

She exhaled sharply, the air searing her throat.

 _Monster,_ Noriko whispered, as though right behind her. At this point, Sakura didn't know who she was talking about.

Kakashi stepped forward, familiar gaze framed by silver-white hair and a black mask. He looked no different from before, and at the same time, worlds different—a sculpture now ostensibly molded by a knife instead of the human hands that had long been assumed. His hitai-ate was absent from his forehead, as ANBU procedure dictated.

He smiled, the resulting narrowing of his gaze harder and cruder than his former, fake crinkling grins.

"How long has he been away from civilian life?" Jiraiya muttered under his breath to Tsunade. Sakura noticed that Kakashi's snapped to him as soon as he opened his mouth, tracking his words with a chilling smile.

"Two and a half years," Tsunade returned grimly. She pursed her lips, returning the ANBU captain's gaze unflinchingly. "He'll adjust."

Jiraiya's lips twisted ironically, his following words barely audible. Sakura caught them only because she was closest. "Do rabid dogs ever return quietly to the kennel?"

Sakura watched her mentor turn a hard gaze on Kakashi again, with the slightest tightness around her eyes.

She shifted her weight. Almost immediately, Kakashi's gaze flashed to her. She was struck by how different this glance was from what she had faced hours earlier. Before, in another's features, she had been weighed like a threat, an encroaching predator a lion attacked to preserve its territory.

Now, his gaze related an enormous nothingness, an indifference, toward her—toward _Sakura_ —transparent in a way it had never quite been before.

Very much aware of the attention of Tsunade and Jiraiya on her, she forced a smile to her face after an awkward pause. "Hi…Kakashi-sensei."

The word sensei choked her on its way out.

"Wait, wait," Naruto said with wide eyes, "does that mean Team Seven is reinstated?"

The godaime nodded firmly.

Kakashi's gaze settled on uncaringly her, like a wolf discarding a piece of meat it found not to be up to par. "Her studies would better be pursued under your guidance."

"My decision is final," Tsunade barked, unwavering. "Team Seven is active once again."

Kakashi's eyes were shuttered. "As my Hokage commands."

Sakura kept her expression as unaffected as humanly possible through it all.

* * *

"Sakura," Naruto waved to her tiredly the next morning, five am sharp. His eyes widened when she neared. "Hey! You're wearing a dress again!"

She was, in fact, wearing a dress, red like the one from almost three years ago. The dress was silk and, paired with flashy high boots, even more grossly luxurious than her first. But fitting nevertheless, she felt, because she was betting that she would be trained even less now as part of Team Seven than she had before. Despite its fragility—and here, exactly, was the irony—she wagered its continued well-being.

The dress was really a private joke to herself. And she had a guess she would need the amusement in the next few hours.

When she stood beside Naruto, she kept her gaze pointedly away from where she knew Kakashi was positioned in the tree to their left. He wasn't even masking himself completely, but it seemed that Naruto had yet to notice.

"Ah, why did I even show up this early? I forgot, he _never_ shows up on t—AH!"

Naruto flinched back as Kakashi appeared in front of them, arms flying back wildly. Long, dangerous limbs were hidden once again under deceptively loose cloth; Sakura's nose twitched at the scent he carried beneath the standard jounin uniform.

 _Blood,_ the Voice clarified helpfully with unholy glee, _It's all over him—_

"Okay," Naruto puffed self-importantly, "Let's hurry up and start the training for a new knockout jutsu! I need more in my repertoire."

Sakura confirmed, if it hadn't already been so, that whatever thin veneer of harmlessness Kakashi had maintained two years earlier with a team of genin had clearly been just that: a veneer. It was blatant in the forest two days before and blatant in the way he looked at Naruto now.

"Why don't you show me what you can do?" he bared his teeth darkly.

Sakura stiffened, something foreign curling in her stomach. Naruto shivered, wariness flashing across his features. Then, he inhaled beside her and recovered with characteristic boldness: "Alright. Let's do this!"

Naruto made the hand signs for a kage bunshin. The bunshin began rotating its hands rapidly around the boy's open palm, producing a rotating sphere of highly volatile wind. Rasengan. She had seen it before, but never at this size.

"How'd you like that, sensei?" Naruto grinned arrogantly, looking down at his creation.

"Interesting," Kakashi murmured, straightening to his full height. And to Sakura, it really _did_ look like he was interested: a cruel, voracious interest that communicated his own enormous capacity for violence and a consequent interest in others' capacities for it as well. He approached Naruto, his slow stalk forward more reminiscent of a wolf's gait than the hunting dogs he was known for.

He didn't look at her as he walked past.

"Do you know your chakra nature, boy?"

 _Boy?_ Sakura's eyebrow twitched. What did he think Naruto was: a masked tool in his ANBU squad?

Had he forgotten the short, but concentrated amount of time he had spent with Naruto before? Did he feel that dissociated from it? Was the barely civil man in front of her now or the poorly civil one from before (and who knew there could be such a magnitude of difference between those two striations) genuine—and which was cultivated? Was it possible that they were both real, like…she and the Voice were?

Being entirely ignored, she took the time to consider leisurely: what _could_ ANBU do to a person with time, but leave behind the rawest, hardest edges of a character if only to survive. And if so, what, in times of commanded complacency, could keep that rawness, hardness in check but—those porn books. Was _that—_? Sex: as primitive as violence and a means to keep it in check. She had yet to try that, she thought to herself dryly.

"Cool!" Naruto roared. He thrust a split parchment up triumphantly. "Look, Sakura-chan, I have a wind nature!"

Honestly, any idiot could have guessed from the size of that rasengan. What had been questionable, perhaps, was whether he possessed any others—

Her forced, detached calm was utterly annihilated as the chirping of birds crackled through the air with sudden, deafening volume. Lightning sprung from Kakashi's hand.

Sakura's heart thumped wildly, her _blood_ pulsed wildly, as she responded instinctively to it, eyes narrowing dangerously. The Voice jolted as well, remembering equally as well what that lightning was capable of.

"After chakra transformation," the man murmured in a voice that belied the savage intensity of his body language—

"Wait," Naruto paused, brow furrowing, "what about Sak—"

"—follows _this_."

And whatever his initial, earnest misgivings, Naruto was immediately distracted, while Sakura remained on high-alert and struggled to keep her own killing intent and weapons out of sight.

When she walked back home three hours later, she didn't bother controlling the ugly smile on her face. As predicted, not one stitch had pulled on her red dress.

* * *

"Sakura," Naruto sighed, dragging out her name. He was collapsed against the counter of Ichiraku Ramen a week later. "That man…that's not Kakashi-sensei."

Sakura paused in sipping the broth of her ramen.

"He's…" Naruto appeared to struggle for words. " _Meaner_. And not lazy! He never shows up late, and he makes me train until I can barely stand anymore. And—" he paused, before adding—"he pretends like you aren't there."

She looked at Naruto for a long moment. Blue, impassioned eyes gazed back, righteously indignant, clear of the blood and the muck and the guilt that Sakura had begun to bathe in.

"Well," she said after a pause, with remarkable pretense of indifference, "he didn't exactly ever think I was his most talented student."

Naruto skipped right past the obvious explosive hidden in that answer. "But now it's like he _hates_ you!"

Sakura's gaze made another pass over the restaurant and paused on its newest occupant. Hinata Hyuuga had just stepped in, her cream-colored jacket still rippling from the light breeze. Her gaze alighted on Sakura with a polite smile; when she found Naruto, two bright spots of color flared in her cheeks.

"Hey Hinata!" Naruto cheered, "Come join us!"

"A-are you sure?" the dark-haired girl questioned. "I would hate to interrupt."

"Not at all," Sakura said. She watched as Hinata hesitated, before tentatively taking a seat to her right.

As the other girl placed her order—sending sly glances to her left where Naruto sat as she did so—Naruto resumed slurping his own ramen with gusto. Apparently, Sakura and his previous conversation had been placed on the side burner.

"How have you been?"

"Well," Hinata responded to her. "Just finished a six-hour surgery."

"You just got here from _surgery_?" Naruto demanded, eyes widening.

Hinata took one look at him, and the red flush returned. "Y-yes. Open heart surgery."

Naruto's expression twisted jokingly. "Your hands must have been covered all over in blood— _gross_."

To Sakura's surprise, Hinata didn't giggle along or blush at with this statement. Instead, she suddenly stiffened.

"A-actually it isn't, Naruto-kun. It's no more blood than you've had on your own hands while protecting Konoha. O-only instead of h-hurting people, I'm saving them."

Hinata's features were almost…sharp. At first, Naruto gazed back, his jaw slack. Sakura glanced at him and Hinata, wondering with distant incredulity if she needed to intervene.

But then Naruto straightened abruptly, a strange look on his face. "You're…right, Hinata. I shouldn't have said that."

Hinata's expression softened again. "Thank you, Naruto-kun." The blush returned.

Ayame brought Hinata's order to the table and, with gentle grace, Hinata reached forward to accept the bowl. As she ate, Naruto's gaze remained on her, even though a full, untouched bowl of ramen had just been placed in front of him as well.

Sakura gazed down at her own bowl with a blank gaze, mind somewhere else.

The next morning was Saturday—which meant no Team Seven training, thankfully. At the crow's command, Sakura found herself at the ANBU locker rooms at six am, washed hair disguised brown and longer, dampening her shoulders.

"Crow," the captain with the panther mask called from behind her—it was the one who had given her her assignments for the previous ANBU missions.

Sakura turned as she finished pulling her arm guards up in sharp movements. "Yes?"

"A special request was placed for you for your mission today."

She felt her muscles lock, the tan skin around the dark eyes of her henge tightening. "What?"

"Relax," the slim woman said sardonically. "Clearly you're moving up the ranks and quickly too. _I've_ never even been assigned on a mission with him, meaning he's never requested me. And I've been in this shithole a damn while longer than you have."

Sakura forced her shoulders to relax, but the painful set of her jaw—hidden by the mask—remained. Someone requesting her meant that she had stuck out _too much_. And that was problematic.

"Who?" she demanded lowly.

The panther mask cocked to the side. "Hatake Kakashi."

It felt like the mask was laughing at her.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Wow. Okay. So I wrote everything up to here in a solid stretch of a few days. Is it worth continuing? Lord knows I have other stories I should be focusing on lol. Leave kudos / comments, and let me know if I should keep going!**


	7. Chapter 7: Oiran

Sorry it's been such a long time! I want to let you all know that I really appreciate the comments you leave behind-they're really what motivate me to keep writing this story. I actually have several of the following chapters written out now (still undergoing editing)!

What Happened Last: Sakura just found out she's been called to go on a mission with Kakashi's ANBU team

That being said, I know it's been a while, so the best thing to do may honestly be to re-read.

* * *

The trees were thick, barren, and provided no coverage from the wind. Along with increased winds, snow had just begun to dust the tips of the leaves, signifying their movement north. Sakura knew that her bone-deep discomfort was easily visible in the tense line down her spine. Hopefully it would be chocked up to mission nerves.

 _A special request was placed for you for your mission today._

She cringed just remembering the words.

Now, two hours later, she raced through the trees with the same ANBU members who had been with Kakashi in the forest: two brown haired men with bear and raccoon masks and two women, Snail and Hyena.

Retrieval mission of high-level Hyena had curtly explained to her. Assets had been detained in a prison in the Land of Snow. Diplomatic efforts had failed.

The copy-nin had not said a word the entire time.

She was beginning to wonder if he even noticed she was there (a rather familiar thought, actually).

"Three hours," Bear called out. A burst of chilly wind shuffled through the trees again, prompting a violent shiver to wrack through her body.

Sakura kept a sly grip on her weapons.

True to Bear's words, they reached the prison just as the sun set. Sakura almost missed the prison entirely, so deeply entrenched was it into one of the mountains. The cavernous entrance glowed dimly, evidence of torches and habitation. If there were shinobi guarding the entrance, they were well hidden.

"Snail with Bear. Hyena and Raccoon with the girl," a guttural voice emerged from behind for the first time.

Her body instinctively stiffened at its sound. She relaxed immediately after, hoping to hide the reaction.

For a fleeting moment, Kakashi's eyes landed on her. Then, he vanished. Tortured screams echoed through the mountains a second later.

Raccoon gave a signal, and she and Panther entered the now sentry-less prison. The cave was poorly lit, but there was enough light to catch on the spilt blood coating the walls.

As they moved, her ears popped from the combination of their speed and the narrowness of the tunnels branching downward. They passed an opening into the level Snail and Bear had taken—a flash of evenly matched combat and piteous groans of inmates pleading to be released—before they arrived at the bottom.

Sakura ducked a scythe and grasped Raccoon's waist in the next instant, twisting to swing him behind her and into the enemy-nin attempting to sneak up on them. Close confines and the threat of collapsing the tunnels prohibited large ninjutsu use, but Hyena's hands immediately began flashing through signs for Earth-release jutsus, making ample use of the element surrounding them.

Sakura almost did the same, but stilled as she remembered her own lack of finesse with the justu. In the end, she pulled the chokuto from her back.

When they had cleared enough of a path, Hyena pushed forward to find the Konoha shinobi in their cells. Raccoon and Sakura both shifted to pick up the slack.

"I've got eyes on her," the man signaled.

Sakura signaled back the affirmative. She grimaced when her blade nicked a vein and blood sprayed all over the ground. Some landed on her pant leg.

 _Getting messy these days,_ the Voice whispered.

She inhaled sharply. The smell was never going to go away, and even if it did, she would always _know_ it was th—

Raccoon made the hand sign to exit. Gritting her teeth to reestablish focus—everything was happening so quickly, _too quickly_ —Sakura turned and saw Hyena with four injured Konoha shinobi. She shunshined to the other woman and grabbed two of the shinobi before continuing to the exit path they had opened up.

If Sakura had thought traveling through the tunnels before was a struggle, it was worse now with more people. She stopped only when she burst through to fresh air and stood on the opposite mountain. The woman in her left arm gave a loud grunt, coughing up blood; the man in her right was unconscious. A quick visual scan suggested that neither was in immediate critical danger, though bones would need to be reset.

"We need to find better cover," Hyena murmured. Her form vibrated then disappeared. Hefting the two bodies up again, Sakura crouched low into the snow and followed.

They travelled for half an hour before they reached a cave well-hidden and well-sheltered from the weather outside. Once they settled the prisoners down—wrapped their wounds and covered them with blankets for protection from the cold—they could do nothing but wait for the rest.

Half an hour passed by silently. Just as the snow finally seemed to slow, the Voice stirred and Sakura stilled in mid-motion along with the other ANBU.

Snail arrived first, an unconscious woman clutched in her arms. Then Bear, two men—both conscious and looking in comparatively healthy condition—propped on each shoulder.

When Sakura's gaze went to the mouth of the cave again, she found Kakashi standing there. His entrance had been soundless. He looked remarkably like the demons depicted in some of the older temples: bathed in blood, monstrous not because of malice but because of seeming indifference.

One of the men whom Bear had carried in stood up loudly. "We need to move. Now."

"We have to wait. Most of the other prisoners need bandaging and rest before we can move again." Hyena negated almost immediately.

"There's no point in bringing them," he declared, pointing demonstratively at the man Sakura had carried in. "Look at him! He's just deadweight."

"Our mission is to—"

"Then the parameters have changed. I am a member of the council, and I outrank all of you here—"

The sound of a blade being unsheathed cut him off. The man stopped speaking abruptly, a soft, choked noise emitting from his mouth. He backed away from Kakashi.

"I'll take second watch, taichou," Snail voiced over the man, beginning to pull out bedrolls for the former prisoners to lay on.

" _Rabid dog,_ " the councilman hissed, face deathly pale.

The blade didn't move for a long moment, still pointed in the man's direction. After a moment, and without a word of acknowledgement, Kakashi disappeared from sight. Sakura's eyebrow twitched.

Sakura rolled onto her heels, using the momentum from the motion to stand up. One by one, she and the other ANBU rolled out the thin pallets.

She watched as Snail slid a kunai under the pallet they were sharing before lying down. Sakura padded her own stash of kunai, shifting them on her person so that the edges wouldn't cut her, and then joined her.

* * *

The next morning, they left by dawn. By evening, they reached Konoha and deposited the prisoners at the hospital.

Kakashi disappeared between one spring breeze and the next. As soon as he did, she began to breathe easier. When she turned, Bear caught her gaze. The other ANBUs uniformly paused in their movements, suddenly all paying attention to her as well.

"Everyone scouted for the squad runs a test mission like this, quick, in-and-out —" Snail began bluntly—"The usual missions are…much messier.".

"Just a heads up," Raccoon added with private irony. " _Kami_ knows I would have appreciated one."

Sakura's lips turned downward.

"You have no right to complain," Hyena scoffed. "There were complications with my first. I didn't even get a baby mission like you did."

"Don't bother getting your hopes up," Bear drawled to her, "It's too early to tell whether he wants you back."

Sakura cracked her neck, considering that with bubbling hope. Kakashi hadn't given even the slightest hint he was _particularly_ aware of her presence, hadn't looked at her more times than she could count on one hand.

She didn't spare them another glance as she left ANBU headquarters. Once a suitable distance away, she entered an abandoned courtyard and diminished the henge, changing into clothes she had sealed into a small scroll she kept on her person. The scrolls were intended for shinobi specializing in undercover missions, but had ultimately become an entirely quotidian convenience among all ninja. Only a few years ago, she had used them to pack for sleepovers with Ino. Funny, how times changed.

Dusting off her clothes when she finished putting them on, she shoved her hands into her pockets and reentered the bustling main street.

* * *

" _—ah!" Sato moaned, back arching._

"Hey."

 _"Let me," the shorter man growled, dark eyes shadowed by hair. "Let me touch you."_

"Sakura."

 _Sato found himself stilling at the other man's expression. Seichi wasn't the most expressive person he had ever met, quite the opposite, in fact, but—_

"Sakura."

Today, Sakura thought to herself darkly, _sucked._ And her latest attempt at distraction—which had been heavily championed by the bookstore's newest employee—had failed utterly to distract her from that fact.

In many ways, though, it was a wonder today hadn't happened sooner. "A challenge," the copy-nin had said when Naruto arrogantly demanded one at training, tasting the word like it was a delicacy. "A taijutsu bout, then?"

Sakura had heard enough in the copy nin's voice to be immediately on-guard. Naruto had bull-dozed right past all signs of danger to enthusiastic reciprocation.

When their beloved jounin captain had left the training ground half an hour ago, he had left his student a broken mess at its center.

"You mind?" Naruto asked now roughly.

She reached out a hand coated in green chakra without responding.

Her face felt stiff. It was no coincidence that Naruto hadn't looked at her for the last half an hour; not even when she had first tried to approach him to heal him. He had recognized exactly the way Kakashi was looking at him by the end, the disregard Kakashi directed _her_ way on the rare occasion he looked at her during these training sessions.…

"That's all I can do for now," Sakura said curtly, finishing up with the fractured rib. "Check in with Hinata tomorrow at the hospital."

"R-right," Naruto coughed out, a strange expression on his face. It lingered, then disappeared. "I guess it's home for me. See you tomorrow."

He turned, but ended up staggering to the side instead of forward. When he took another step and almost landed on his face in the dirt, Sakura rolled her eyes. Gripping his wrist, she threw his arm over her shoulder and took his body weight onto her frame.

"What—what are you doing?!"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"But I'm getting blood and dirt all over you."

"I noticed."

"…You promise you won't hit me later?"

"Why would I hit _you_ for that?"

"Who else would you hit?"

Sakura didn't answer, nudging Naruto to the side so that he avoided a protruding rock he undoubtedly would have tripped on. When the normally boisterous figure next to her continued to be uncharacteristically silent, she turned to examine him.

Blue eyes squinted back at her. "You know, you're really different now. You don't yell at me as much."

She didn't miss a beat. "Have you ever thought that maybe it's because _you've_ become less of an idiot?"

"I'm not an idiot!" Naruto cried dramatically.

Her lips tightened. "You're right. You're not. You're just…really oblivious."

"Oblivious?" Naruto echoed, brows furrowing. "Hey, I know _lots_ of things, okay? Like the book you're reading! I mean, I don't really see their great value, but I _personally_ edited every scene of every book that the ero-sennin has published since I was thirteen—"

He came to a sudden stop, eyes widening in recognition as he looked around. "We're here."

She looked up at a tall, pale colored complex with rust brown roofing.

"You live right next to the civilian prison."

"Yep," he hummed unconcernedly, "it gets a little noisy whenever there's a riot, but otherwise it's _great_. Really keeps the mortgage rates down."

Her mouth twitched.

"…which apartment?"

He pointed.

Sakura eyed the long spiraling of stairs up to Naruto's floor and then lifted him in her arms. He was gaping by the time she put him down.

Naruto reached behind a conspicuous potted plant and pulled out a key. He wedged it into the lock and shoved the door open. The table she caught sight of was stacked almost to the ceiling with empty ramen cups.

"You'll be good from here?"

Naruto blinked back slowly. Then he smiled widely. "Don't worry about me! I can barely even feel anything anymore!"

Even if he hadn't winced near the end of his sentence, she probably would not have believed him.

"Go to the hospital tomorrow."

He scratched his head sheepishly and then nodded. Sakura gave him one last glance and then turned to jump over the railing and onto the street below. She landed with a thud, not bothering to disguise the sound.

A familiar, chilling caw sounded behind her.

In an instant, her shoulders tensed, hunching slightly. She felt the solid pressure of clawed feet curving around her shoulder. The caw sounded again, this time directly by her ear.

Sakura turn her head to the side to meet the crow's mismatched gaze. Clutched in its beak was a small cylinder—a scroll. When its gaze continued to burn into her, she reluctantly reached up a hand to retrieve it. She unrolled the parchment, reading it quickly as each line was revealed. It wasn't long.

"Are you the one making this happen?" Sakura demanded lowly. She hadn't asked it until now—but it was now too _possible_ to ignore. "Do you think it's _funny_ , putting me on ANBU missions with Kakashi?"

"I put you in ANBU, but this happened without my interference," Shisui returned, placidly, "As always, ensure that you are not found out or risk my…disappointment." He released a loud, shrill caw and took off from her shoulder.

Numbly, she rolled the scroll back up and stuffed it into her pack. After finding an abandoned restroom, pulling out the scroll sealed with her uniform and applying the same henge, she made her way to the ANBU headquarters.

It hadn't even been two days. _Two days_.

Snail's back was the first to greet her. When the other woman heard the sound of the locker room opening, she turned, eyes widening in recognition. "So you're back after all."

Bear came to stand beside her, surveying her evenly. Behind the both of them, Raccoon offered a small nod.

"Right," Sakura muttered, stomach sinking the entire while, "what's this one about?"

"We don't know yet," Bear answered, sounding equally displeased about this turn of events.

Raccoon snapped his shin guards on, the metal on metal creating a clang. The door open swung open behind Sakura. Sakura turned, gaze falling first on long, pale limbs before the she made her way to the straight, long black hair and hyena mask.

"Details?" Raccoon prompted.

Hyena was silent for a moment. Then, in a blunt tone, she began.

* * *

"Messy," had been the first word out of Hyena's mouth. Later, Sakura knew exactly how much of an understatement that had been.

 _Messy._ The word did a laughable job of describing what transpired.

Even 'horrific' scarcely did justice. But she would use it for now. It had been beyond anything Sakura could have ever imagined; she had already stopped three times in the three hours they had spent travelling back to stumble over to a bush and vomit.

( _Fire, hot, suffocating, the sweet-sick smell of burning of flesh, the rhythmic cadence of their screams—_ )

The urge to burn the clothes she was wearing—even though she knew they were clean (they had all been forced to change with the sheer amount of blood on them)—persisted like a drumbeat, paired with each breath.

She jerked when she felt something bump against her hip. Looking down, she saw that Raccoon was offering his canteen to her. They were alone at the back, a good mile behind the nearest ANBU in the formation. In the dark, Sakura tried her best to meet the other man's gaze, but it was impossible, especially at the pace they were moving.

Her head threatened to split. She felt like any second the world might suddenly tilt to the side and leave her adrift, senseless in a void. She grabbed the canteen and lifted it to her mouth. She ended up choking on more of its contents than she swallowed, but it was enough to remove some of the awful taste.

Taking another swill, Sakura spat the water out and handed the canteen back. It reassured her that the hand that reached out to grasp the water wasn't entirely steady. The growing nausea in her gut surged again. She scanned the forest for miles ahead, looking for the best location to make her next vomiting pit stop.

She managed the next few minutes until there by inhaling and exhaling deeply, eyes closed.

When the proper amount of time passed and her gaze darted to her chosen point again, she found that their squad had veered off-course. They were leaving the thick of the trees for a sparser stretch of forest. And sparse flora usually meant that—

Streams of lanterns glinted through the leaves. Civilization. For some reason, they were heading straight toward it.

A tall, brass gate soon emerged, proclaiming proudly: Tanzaku Quarters.

Her eyes narrowed. That was the infamous den Naruto had retrieved Tsunade from years ago, famous for gambling, dinking, and—

"Who wants to… _gamble_ now?" she bit out.

Raccoon finally turned his head. When his voice emerged, slightly muffled from beneath his mask. "There's no point trying to be coy, Crow."

Sakura's face was torn between too many disparate reactions. "But—"

"For some of us, it's required to…maintain that subtle distinction between ANBU and more disturbing pathologies."

There was a darkly, knowing quality to his voice. Sakura's mouth pursed, torn between incredulity and something else.

* * *

Her progression from there—the outskirts of Tanzaku Quarters—to the foyer of its finest house of oiran was less of a willing descent into lechery and more a result of herding. But even she had to admit that the building they arrived at was resplendent: crimson and obscene even in the licentiousness of the nearby brothels and bars. The scent of alcohol was thick in the air throughout the entire district but only thickened, joined now by a scent of expensive, heady perfume, when they passed through the entrance.

Civilians flinched away as they entered. Sakura was almost apologetic—the aura of imminent violence about her team had become deadly accompaniment to the lusty drum beats and samisen that greeted its other visitors.

A woman emerged from a curtained passage, slim and swan-necked. Her lips were painted blood-red, and her hair was drawn back from her face. A few wisps escaped in delicate curls to brush her cheeks. She smiled, peering up at them through her lashes.

Oiran weren't exactly discussed in polite company, but Ino had been more than an ample resource to anyone around in her younger years. Sakura knew, though not much, at least that they were the highest ranked of their kind. According to popular gossip, there were daimyo who had gone without the touch of the oiran they lusted after, so sparing the elite were with their favor.

"My girls have always enjoyed your visits of your kind," the woman continued, making suggestive eye contact with each member of the squad. Her gaze passed over Sakura, of course, but missed—

Sakura turned, eyes narrowed, to find that Kakashi was not there.

The woman approached Hyena, a distinctly lustful smile curving on her lips. Hyena returned this glance by tilting her head to the side, long hair falling over one shoulder as she did so.

"I assume you have no objection..." the woman murmured, already loosening her obi. The cloth parted to reveal a dangerously deepening path of skin. Sakura yanked her gaze to the side, observing the courtyard-like structure of the building. Every level looked out onto the open ground floor, she noted with great concentration.

Hyena, the owner, and the rest were gone before Sakura's next blink. Which left just her and the owner's assistant behind.

A hesitant cough sounded. Sakura's gaze moved back to the left.

"The divans on each floor outside the rooms," she interrupted before he could speak, "I'll just take one of those. Just to rest."

He looked unsure. She wondered if she would have to pull the chokuto out to convince him. Because there was no way she was stumbling out now into the drunk and high masses to try to find somewhere else to sleep.

Perhaps it was her glare, but he relented. "O-of course. The divans on the top floor are… most comfortable."

Sakura gave a quick nod and then sent chakra to her feet to boost herself upward. When her feet settled once again on lush carpeting, she found that the highest level was possibly the most extravagant of them all.

Sakura swung her chokuto off her back and uncaringly stabbed it upright into the floor. It would be easily accessible in her reclined position.

The divan she had chosen, at the end of the hall, was incredibly long, but also narrow. She shifted for a moment, trying to get comfortable. She wouldn't be able to sleep like this, exposed and so out in the open. But she would take what she could get.

She shifted onto her side and closed her eyes.

And opened them a second later.

Moans: distinctly female, breathy, and high with ecstasy. She could tune out the noises from the other rooms, but these—were louder than the rest.

Sakura growled and shifted onto her other side. As though at the behest of a sadistic conductor, the moans steadily rose in pitch and urgency. She shut her eyes determinedly.

A long, drawn-out wail pierced the air. It lasted longer than human lungs had any right to allow.

Sakura's eyes flicked open and glared violently at the ceiling. One of the golden doors on the floor swung open a scarce thirty seconds later. It was the precise door behind which those noises had emerged.

A figure stood in the open entryway, silhouetted by the dim lighting inside. The woman's pink lips were downturned in a light pout, ostensibly at her departure from the room. As she made her way down the hall, her kimono was untied, revealing firm breasts and full, curved hips. She seemed considerably unconcerned by this. Her movements were slow, and at each step forward, her eyelids fluttered tellingly, features drawn with echoes of pleasure.

Sakura remained in her reclining position, reluctant to hear the shrill scream that would result from startling her.

When the woman's eyes inevitably fell on her, the pout abruptly vanished from her lips and was replaced instead with a haughty smirk.

It was an arrogant expression and entirely self-satisfied. She passed by with a gentle brush of air, kimono and long, black hair fluttering behind her.

The smell of rich, jasmine perfume reached Sakura's nose—and then something else. Sakura's brows furrowed as she sniffed lightly in an attempt to identify it. It smelled…familiar: smoke, metal, pine, and—

She straightened urgently, eyes flying to door that had yet to close.

A pair of mismatched eyes, half-lidded, gazed back. Feral.

She stared soundlessly, her mouth tight behind her mask and face hot.

He had turned out the oiran in less than five minutes, with almost militant precision. What had been the point? _Due diligence?_ The poorly guised savagery in his eyes had not abated at all.

With a cold, indifferent curl of the lip, he blurred and then vanished. The open door revealed an empty room. The bed, some irreverent, unconscionable part of her brain noted, hadn't been used.

* * *

Author's Note: Please let me know what you think! Your feedback is so, so wonderful!


	8. Chapter 8: Sai

**Note:** UPDATE 1 of 4 on Jan. 7

* * *

The mission ended with a swift and altogether uneventful journey back. (And she tried— _really tried—_ not to think about what she had seen. All of it.)

Sakura settled back at home, burned her uniform, and showered. She tried to sleep after, because she'd been running on a sleep deficit the past few days; but it was midday and her body clock wouldn't let her.

Eventually, she threw on some clothes and went to the grocery store across the village. She hadn't visited it in years, not ever since she'd purchased that unfortunate bottle of milk.

Sakura should have known by now to stay away from that store.

"Watch out!" an ink-covered Naruto bellowed. "He's the devil's spawn! _Run_ —"

"That's not a very nice introduction, dickless," a cool, monotonous voice intoned, stepping off a giant, ink creature.

A wide, plastic smile stretched across the newcomer's face. His skin was as pale as parchment. eyes and hair as dark as possible in contrast. "I'm Sai."

"What he _is_ ," Naruto growled, trying to shake off the ink on him like a wet dog, "is the devil's spawn. There's no way I'm letting Tsunade baa-chan make him a part of Team Seven."

"Haruno Sakura," she returned, ignoring Naruto's betrayed look. What was there to feel betrayed for?

New members might have seemed like a curve ball to Naruto, but she had spent the past few years on make-shift teams for one-off missions—because Team Seven had disbanded and Tsunade hadn't been the type to abscond from Konoha with her protégé. Well, Tsunade might have been, before…but not as Hokage.

"Sakura," Naruto said softly, face deadly serious. "He's not part of this team. I'm not letting anyone replace Sasuke—"

"You mean the traitor?" Sai interjected, smiling kindly.

When Naruto gave a wordless scream of rage, air hissed through Sakura's teeth and she stepped forward to catch the back of his shirt, ignoring the clenching in her own chest at Sai's words. Sai's smile flickered slightly when Naruto was unable to pull free.

"Interesting," the black haired boy commented. "The reports I've read indicate that you lack talent as a shinobi, Haruno-san."

"It's Sakura. And when we get to the training grounds in a few minutes," Sakura smiled back humorlessly, "I'm sure our captain will readily assure you that's just the case. Come on."

It didn't take much effort to drag Naruto the rest of the way to the training ground. Sai followed behind them at a sedate pace, dark, unreadable eyes taking in everything from the street vendors to the stray dogs with equal interest.

Sakura kept a disinterested eye on him the entire way. Sai was somehow…both extraordinarily unusual and extraordinarily ordinary. She wasn't blind. He had much of the classical beauty that had made Sasuke a fan-favorite among her peers, herself once included. But his expression was so unrelentingly bland, that it rendered him somehow…forgettable at the same time.

Sai's gaze slid to hers, catching her mid-perusal. He returned the look frankly, without the self-consciousness most would have shown.

"Man, can't he forget _once_?" Naruto muttered as the field—and Kakashi—came into sight. He had stiffened somewhat, apparently remembering their last training session. "Or at least come to training late, like he used to."

"The legendary copy-nin…" Sai noted softly, attention shifting away from her.

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto scoffed, flapping his hand, "So what?"

"He looks like he has a big dick," he added after some consideration.

Naruto choked on the saliva in his mouth. Sakura, in turn, hastily let go of Naruto. (No. She had _not_ heard that. And she hadn't seen anything last night _either_.)

She moved onto the field. The moment she escaped the shadowy comfort of the inner city's tall buildings for the open expanse, she began to feel the full brunt of the sun. She could almost see the pulsating wave of heat coating the earth.

"Taichou," Sai greeted, bowing sharply. "I am eager to prove my worth to this team."

Kakashi's head cocked to the side as he straightened to his full height, centimeters above all of them.

His hand flashed out of sight for a second. She felt more than saw Naruto flinch beside her on reflex. A second later, yards of cloth unfurled in the air—orange, gold, crimson—and then landed in her hands.

"Nice, uh, kimono," Naruto said blankly.

Sai reached for the scroll resting on the boulder beside them. "An escort mission," he filled in, dark eyes scanning the document. "For the daimyo's daughter. The royal family has been receiving threats in light of the oldest son's upcoming marriage, and they want shinobi on top of their full guard detail. They also want a body double for her travel to the wedding."

Both his and Naruto's gaze shot to her. Sakura looked down at the kimono in her hands.

Kakashi's eyes rested on Sai indifferently. "You. Run point."

"And what will you be doing?" Naruto demanded, squinting.

"Watching from afar," the Copy-nin said, spinning a kunai in his hand lazily. "Don't fuck up."

From her experience under him in ANBU, Sakura wondered meanly if any action on his part could only end in mass-bloodshed, and that was why he was distancing himself—

 _That's a tad unfair,_ the Voice mocked. _We're not much better, are we?_

Sai smiled stiffly at her, and she went behind a tree to change.

* * *

Harasa Mihiko, she learned, was the daimyo's eldest child and only daughter. Sakura hadn't encountered many upper class women on her missions so far.

But the last had been the princess who had watched her kill Noriko.

Other than their shared social status, Mihiko and Mako shared nothing in common. Mako had been, if not meek, then mild-mannered—and understandably shell-shocked by the slaughter of her ladies-in-waiting. She had spent most of the mission afterwards crying softly into her handkerchief, uncaring of her audience. She had also been beautiful.

As Sakura surveyed her, she knew that Mihiko was not beautiful. She was too jarring for beauty: red hair, straight as straw, plummeted down her back to the backs of her knees; bark brown eyes beneath thin, arched eyebrows peered out at them, clinical. She wasn't beautiful, but there was something…compelling about her nevertheless.

If one could only look past her arrogance, of course. Sakura swore that she could sense Mihiko's seeming baseline condition of extreme condescension from almost two kilometers back. It permeated those around her too. She felt the skeptical scrutiny of Mihiko's samurai guard keenly. She knew she didn't look exactly like Mihiko. But, per the mission specs, she had changed her hair to match hers, and the kimono hid any obvious differences in their figures.

The daimyo's daughter's face wasn't exactly one that was publicized; most royal women were heavily sheltered before marriage.

"My lady," Sai greeted calmly. He blinked for a second, and then bowed slightly. Naruto coughed before he and Sakura followed suit.

Mihiko's brown eyes slowly passed over them sharply. "I was told the copy-nin would be here."

"He will be keeping perimeter," Sai responded. It wasn't strictly true—Kakashi had only said he would be watching from afar. It sounded better, though.

Mihiko's face tightened slightly. Without warning, the daimyo's daughter's attention moved to her.

"You," Mihiko said softly. "Follow."

She spun immediately after this declaration, red hair fanning out behind her. Two of her guards—tall, bulky men who tied their hair in the way of the samurai—bent to help her into the palanquin. It was the largest one Sakura had ever seen; most fit two to four individuals. This, however, had enough space for at least ten, which she guessed from the ten foot soldiers carrying it.

Sakura followed. The heavy curtain fell behind her with a loud swish, just brushing the back of her kimono.

The daimyo's daughter was already seated, lounging on cushions with feet bare on the tatami mat. Two ladies-in-waiting sat to her left in seiza. To the right, a woman wielded a brush over a large piece of parchment.

"The black-haired one would have looked better in a kimono," Mihiko remarked coolly.

Sakura blinked, not sure how to grace that with a response. Most probably prompted by the awkward silence, the painter's eyes left the painting, darting up from beneath a thick curtain of lashes to analyze the palanquin's newest occupant.

Sakura blinked.

The woman wielding the brush was not, in fact, a woman at all. Or at least, not a born one.

Sakura wasn't immediately sure what betrayed it. On the whole, the performance of femininity was startlingly convincing: long black hair, tied low at the base of the neck, paired with a narrow, angular face. As the painter shifted, the loosely tied kimono revealed planes of chest that were flatter than they should have been, affirming her intuition. She? He? She settled for he for now.

He continued to stare. The daimyo's daughter noticed.

"Do you like what you see?" Mihiko murmured. The painter averted his gaze back to his painting.

The silence that followed was charged.

"Do tell, Asahi-chan," Mihiko said, voice artfully distant, "She captured your attention, after all, when you're supposed to be hard at work for me. I wonder what it could have been." Her posture indicated what would have seemed to be utter disinterest in the matter. "Her eyes are too pale to prompt poetry. Her features are too hard, too sharp to allude to what I have observed is a _desired_ softness in women."

Until this point, the daimyo's daughter's face had undergone only the minutest shifts to communicate her displeasure. It was a surprise, therefore, when she suddenly stood up and stalked forward, wrapping a slim hand around Asahi's long throat.

"She distracted you," Mihiko said coldly. "So pay the girl her due compliment. Tell her what you _liked_."

A strand of hair of the painter's hair fell forward. The voice that emerged was not what she expected at all, a smooth, low tenor that did not attempt to disguise itself .

"I only thought that the shinobi's disguise did you no justice, Mihiko-sama," Asahi said, head raising slowly.

His gaze shocked Sakura, who had thought him timid until now.

Two spots of red appeared on Mihiko's cheeks. Her hand spasmed, before she dug her nails into the painter's skin.

"Don't think your poisonous words will have any effect on me," the daimyo's daughter said stiffly. "Try again."

His head rolled to the side, and he peered up at her through his lashes. In a swift movement, he shifted to his knees, putting his head a scant few inches below hers. Mihiko's companions gasped, sharing scandalized looks.

"I'm an artist," the painter breathed. "I saw a blank—untouched—canvas."

"Then paint it," Mihiko breathed back, nostrils flaring, "if you're so eager."

"You know it's not the canvas I _want_."

A loud slap echoed through the room. Asahi's head snapped to the side like a rag doll's.

"Don't overstep," Mihiko said stonily. A glitter of challenge flashed through her eyes. "Tattoo her, if you want so badly to 'paint her skin.' Then, finish the portrait. My dear brother's wedding approaches, and it would be regrettable to turn up empty handed."

Baffled by most of what had just transpired, Sakura's head snapped up at that. "With all due respect, tattoos are identifying markers in my line of work."

Mihiko looked at her like an errant fly had suddenly spoken. "Your black ops force wears them. Shall I ask your captain, the copy-nin, for permission?"

"My lady," one of the women sitting still in seiza interrupted to Sakura's immense gratitude. "You can't let him touch her!"

Another lady-in-waiting nudged her frantically, attempting to silence her. But the original woman did not back down, flicking a disgusted glance at Asahi.

"He was a kagema," the woman whispered. "He's held women _and_ men."

The third lady-in-waiting, apparently not in the know, gave a horrified gasp. The former kagema in question had returned to his painting dutifully, a smug tilt to his lips.

"And?" For all her ladies-in-waiting's horror, the daimyo's daughter looked unperturbed and even annoyed.

" _And_?" the third lady-in-waiting echoed incredulously, eyes as round as coins.

"It's not right!" the second woman finally exclaimed. "For a man like that to touch an honest woman. He shouldn't even be in here with us."

Mihiko's eyes narrowed. Then she laughed riotously, if a bit haughtily.

"What's 'not right,'" she announced, "is that he's like the rest of his _kind._ He may try to hide it with his pretty kimonos and his elaborate fans, but in the end, he too thinks his penis is godsend. Alas, he's the best painter in the Land of Fire. And brother dear does deserve the best for his wedding. His own blessed cock has granted him that unearned status."

Sakura shifted her weight slightly. Her ankle was a bit sore from a previous mission.

The red-haired woman caught onto the movement like a viper. Her voice was a hiss. "You disagree, shinobi? Kaito is an idiot, and yet, my soon-to-be-wed brother will be the one to succeed my father—a boy who believes his bodily desires are sooner grounds for war than poverty or draught. Do you think any other kind of man exists in this world?"

"Mihiko-sama," her companion gasped, "You shouldn't speak like that, especially—"

"Shouldn't I? Make no mistake that in another world, _I_ would be your ruler," Mihiko continued ruthlessly.

She and Mihiko locked gazes, for a moment. But the moment passed—as quickly as though it had never even existed—when the palanquin lurched to a sudden stop and jerked as it hit the ground.

Sakura was immediately on guard. There had been no sounds of commotion outside, but this was not a planned to stop. Seconds before the curtains shielding the entrance opened, Sakura lunged forward and shoved Mihiko into a wardrobe. She acted not a moment too soon.

A large man with skin as rich as the earth entered through the curtain with a smaller, purple-haired woman. They were both armed and wore no hitai-ate.

"Who are you?" Sakura demanded imperiously, carrying herself just as Mihiko had done seconds before.

The ladies in waiting scattered from their neat line in belated reaction, clinging to each other in fear.

From the corner of her eyes, she saw Asahi shift his body slightly to cover the wardrobe.

"Our fine lady been asking for this, hasn't she?" the purple-haired woman giggled, eyes widening at Sakura. "Take a look at this room, Jirou."

"Shut up and grab her," the man responded gruffly. His gaze passed over the other occupants of the palanquin without interest.

Sakura shifted her weight, taut with tension as her mind worked rapidly. Should she fight and resist capture? But there had been no sounds of a fight outside, as though they had been _allowed_ into the palanquin. Was that her new team member's—Sai's—aim? Was he an enemy who had infiltrated Konoha?

The woman stalked toward her. "I hope daddy pays up, sweetheart," she crooned, gripping her hands painfully and tying them together tightly with wire.

Sakura allowed it, letting a pained grunt spill from her lips as she was gagged and promptly tossed over the woman's shoulder. She couldn't see Sai or Naruto anywhere, but she did sense mostly-hidden chakra. Her eyes narrowed.

The two enemy shinobi didn't dilly-dally. Paying no mind to the samurai and foot soldiers they had knocked out to break in, they took off into the trees.

Just before her view of the palanquin disappeared, she saw a lone figure finally step out from the shadows of the trees. It was Sai.

He gave a wide, plastic smile as his hand to his lips in a silencing motion.

Sakura squinted at him before he disappeared. A second later, dozens of more shinobi from the surrounding trees abandoned branches to follow them.

The new shinobi punched the man's shoulder in celebration, jeered that "they hadn't even been needed as back up," why the hell had he made them all come?

One even let his hand pass roughly over Sakura's bottom.

And she abruptly understood what Sai had done.

As long as these shinobi thought they had the real deal, Mihiko and the rest of her entourage could travel safely to the wedding without delay. The samurai and the foot soldiers had only been knocked out. They had probably been told not to put up a fight.

The enemy shinobi's numbers vastly outranked theirs, and rather than engaging in an prolonged battle, Sai had clearly decided to readily offer Sakura to distract them.

Fucking Sai. Maybe Naruto had had the right idea after all.

* * *

They travelled for a little more than an hour until they reached a sprawling camp. The entire way, Sakura screamed and cried and clawed at her captors, playing her role aptly while biding her time.

Belatedly, she wondered how Sai _had_ made Naruto agree to this. Granted, it wasn't like she was actually in much danger.

But the idea of Naruto being complicit in this plan…

She hastily distracted herself from her thoughts, welcoming the sharp pain in her knees as the enemy shinobi tossed her into a cage at the middle of the camp. When she looked up, she was surrounded by what looked to be the entire group, counting upwards of fifty.

"Why am I here? _Who are you_?" Sakura asked, her voice a hoarse rasp from the gag.

The man who had aided in her capture responded. "As long as your family provides payment before the deadline, no harm will come to you."

"And if they don't?" she demanded, straightening to her feet. "When's the deadline?"

How long until Mihiko and her entourage reached the wedding? About two days. Then, another four until she made her way back to the palace.

Sakura would have to keep this farce up for six days, minimum.

"Two days," the man responded, after a short pause. Too little time for a courier to reach the camp. They must have arranged a drop off location, Sakura guessed.

"Oh, tell her the truth, Jirou," the woman who had carried her cut in, a wide smile on her face. "That's just the soft deadline. After that, we start cutting off body parts. Sending them. Don't worry, Mihiko- _sama_ , nothing vital, at first. But we'll keeping cutting until nothing's left. _That's_ the hard deadline."

She let the panic show on her face, because it was a fitting response for a daimyo's daughter. Pointedly, though—there was no way she was going to be able to keep up this sham for as long as she needed to.

They left her, then, presumably to let her hysterically sob without imposing on them.

Sakura appreciated the space. It allowed her to consider her options.

If she stayed, she would either have to invent a jutsu to help her fake-sacrifice body parts (unlikely) or actually sacrifice them (which, no, she was not willing). Maybe Sai had kindly sent a hawk requesting an extraction team, but they wouldn't reach in time, not with the time it would take for the bird to travel and for most teams to actually come.

The only kind of team that could reach fast enough was an ANBU team. But they wouldn't send ANBU for Sakura Haruno. The only rare time ANBU performed extraction without ulterior motive (not just to protect information or punish treason) was if it was one of their own. Which 'Sakura' was not. It was the harsh reality of there always being more demand for ANBU than there was supply.

Nonetheless, she _could_ escape by herself—she was more than capable of it.

But…if Sakura broke free, even this group wouldn't be stupid enough to miss the skill of another shinobi; they would know they had been duped and descend on Mihiko and her entourage on her way back.

She supposed, with some generosity, that this had all happened because Sai did not know for sure what Kakashi was capable of. It was probably that uncertainty—the chance that the stories were tall tales, as many shinobi accounts admittedly did become—that had made the latest Team Seven member doubt whether their team would be enough to oppose the larger numbers.

 _If_ she was being generous: it wasn't a surprise Sai had assumed the worst. The infamous copy-nin had hardly made the best impression or shown that he was in the least bit inclined to intervene in any violent altercation. He didn't know that Kakashi was one of the most devastating forces anyone _could_ encounter in a violent altercation.

But the point stood, that Sakura had been sacrificed quite pointlessly.

She scoffed, shifting herself until she was lying on her back and staring at the twilight sky. The sky was cloudless here, a fiery blend of smoky orange—so beautiful it burned—and a deep, resilient blue.

It was almost…nice, like this. Quiet.

And the infernal crow wasn't here. Sakura could always find it within herself to appreciate that.

There were guards positioned a short distance from her around the cage. One woman and three men. She cataloged the kunai on their bodies as she enjoyed the light breeze.

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, it was dark.

* * *

Author's Note: Please review!


	9. Chapter 9: Deus Ex Machina

**Note:** UPDATE 2 of 4 on Jan. 7

* * *

The camp was mostly silent. The shinobi had cooked meat and eaten around the fire hours ago. Sakura had been given some food as well, had been made to bow with her hands tied behind her back to eat it.

Now, she sat boredly inside her cage, counting stars to pass the time.

Outside her cage, the shinobi guarding her (a different set now) traded bawdy stories to keep themselves entertained. Only one held back. It was the purple-haired woman from the beginning of this debacle—Akane.

Akane had assumed her shift with a wide smile as soon as dinner had finished.

Sakura hadn't noticed it at first, too preoccupied with other things. But now she saw that there was definitely something _off_ about the older woman. Akane had been staring at her intently for the last two hours—which was not in and of itself unusual, perhaps, because Sakura was her prisoner. But it was the content of her gaze.

"And _once_ there was a lady who bathed in rose petals," one of the shinobi bellowed, having succumbed to the sake in his bottle, "and one day she hid—"

Akane gave Sakura brief, hungry look before walking over to the man. She tossed a kunai into the air and caught it by the blade.

"Akane-san," the bigger man gulped, fearful at her sudden presence. "Was there something you wanted?"

"What I want," Akane murmured, a smile stretching now across her face now, "is for you and your friends to be gone."

Sakura's lips twitched, hiding a smirk. Akane wanted to be alone? Well, that would make escape _considerably_ easier.

At first, the man blinked without comprehension. Then, he stammered. "B-but Jirou told us that four of us had to watch her at all times."

Akane arched a brow, tutting now. "Do you really think I can't handle one itty, bitty lady all by myself?"

Her kunai traced its way delicately down the line of his throat, down his chest and stomach, until it rested between his legs.

"I'm leaving," the man gave in immediately. The other men readily obeyed, abandoning the cage and heading towards the edges of the camp. After a moment, Akane withdrew her blade and the man followed, the stink of his sweat trailing behind him.

The purple haired rogue-nin turned back around slowly, black eyes gleaming. Sakura watched unflinchingly in the shadowed part of the cage.

"Finally." Akane gave a breathy sigh, taking a moment to palm herself. Then, she reached to her belt to pull out the key.

Sakura waited with what she believed to be admirable patience.

"Are you scared, darling?" Great. She wanted to _talk_.

"Terrified," Sakura said a little too forcefully. Akane paused, lips twisting.

She corrected herself hastily. " _Please_. Please don't do this to me. What do you want? I'll give you anything—money, weapons, _whatever_. Please don't hurt me."

The words tasted like blood in her mouth. That was because she bit into her tongue saying them.

Akane was panting now, fumbling to fit the key into the lock, jamming it in and wrenching it to the side in her impatience. And then the purple haired woman was in front of her. The door of the cage was open behind her.

But still, Sakura waited. She wanted to escape with as little disruption as possible. She hadn't watched the men as they left, but she had been listening. And she hadn't heard them enter their tents; she couldn't verify that they weren't still watching.

Sakura had heard their footsteps heading away, and now—nothing.

As she puzzled over this, Akane drew a fist back and punched her in the face. The motion sent Sakura into the side of the cage with a loud clang. Akane gave a delighted giggle.

 _Gut her_ , the Voice snarled.

Sakura glowered at the tree in front of her. The purple haired woman packed more of a punch than she'd thought.

A hand curled into her hair, stroking delicately. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mihiko-sama. Did I _hurt_ you?"

The hand slipped down to cup her face as Akane looked down at her.

"You look so pretty, you know," the woman gasped, fingers digging greedily into her cheeks, "So, so pretty. I wish I could keep you forever. But climax is the little death, after all, and— _god_ —you're going to bleed so good for me—"

She was stopped by a terrible coughing fit. After a moment, blood began to spill from her mouth.

Sakura looked down. A hand protruded from Akane's chest. Its counterpart didn't bother trying to cover the woman's mouth.

Rage— jealous and _petty_ —burned through Sakura. She knew exactly whom that hand belonged to. Of course, he had shown up, just at this moment.

Akane gaped at her, black eyes panicked and suddenly childish. "What—" The woman collapsed limply.

The tall figure stood like a specter over Akane's collapsed form. His tanto was coated to the hilt in blood. Finally, she realized why she hadn't heard those men return to those tents.

(He had killed them all. There was no one else was alive in the camp. No one to follow them.)

She hadn't thought to do that.

"Get out," the figure said softly.

Sakura gazed back with remarkable stoicism, or so she thought. Glancing down at Akane's dead body, she gathered the ends of her kimono and stepped over the pool of blood steadily spreading. She didn't quite manage it. As her left foot landed, she felt the—

"I've seen thousands of your kind." Kakashi's eyes passed over the dried tracks of fake tears and blood on her face.

 _Our kind_ , the Voice whispered, something like trepidation in its own voice.

She shook her head minutely, brain processing his words through what seemed to be haze of noise.

"Your greatest accomplishment for the ages will be feeding the grass," the copy-nin continued tonelessly. "After the first few years, your parents alone will remember you. Because when others ask them how their child died, the pit of shame in them will continue to burn—that their daughter died for nothing. That, in the end, she was meaningless. And that this, as a result, will also be their legacy."

It was the most he had ever said to her.

When she turned back, she found that he had already vanished into the trees. Her nails dug crescent marks into her palms.

* * *

It was an hour or so before dawn that they reached the camp. They traveled in silence, Sakura striving as much as she could to contain her anger and largely mutilating her hands in this endeavor.

As soon as Sakura broke into the clearing, she felt a heavy force drive into her solar plexus. It took her a few seconds to realize that she was not, in fact, being attacked.

She spat coarse, blonde hair out of her mouth. After a moment, the grip relented slightly.

"That— _that_ —" Naruto didn't seem to be able to find a word bad enough for Sai, "He made sure I wasn't here. When I found out what he had done…"

A sweet bolt of relief lanced through her.

"Haruno-san," their newest team member greeted politely, expression untroubled.

" _You_ ," Naruto growled, hands contorted into claws, "Don't you dare—"

"Shut up, dickless," Sai said with a smile. "Taichou."

Kakashi's gaze flicked up, pausing his wiping of the bloodstained tanto against the tree behind Sakura.

Sai bowed sharply. "As I was uncertain of how much you intended to intervene, I conducted the team in the most effective way to ensure success in our mission regardless. I trust that you have found my leadership satisfactory."

Naruto was almost incoherent in his rage. "You _gave up_ a teammate!"

 _"_ If Haruno-san had been injured," Sai interrupted smoothly, "that would have been most unfortunate. But as it stands, the mission would have gone on unimpeded and—"

Kakashi had suddenly appeared in front of him, inches from his face.

Sakura watched the altogether bizarre scene occurring before with annoyance.

"Taichou?" Sai's smile had dropped.

"I know what you are," the copy-nin drawled, his body entirely relaxed. "I know what you've been trained to do. But how should I put this…"

Kakashi leaned in, until his mask brushed the younger man's ear. He whispered something that Sakura could not hear.

"I don't understand, taichou. I have always received positive…feedback."

The copy-nin cocked his head to the side as though he were mildly amused by the other's words. Or maybe it wasn't amusement. The clouds had stretched to cover the moon, and she couldn't see Kakashi's face now either.

"I will correct myself," Sai said after a pregnant pause.

Sakura watched as Kakashi's hand tensed—as though, for a second, he really were going to swipe the blade still held in it across the other's throat. Then, fortunately, he flickered and disappeared.

And Naruto shoved Sai back against a tree.

Sai's voice, when it emerged, was as monotonous as ever; but he was clearly still distracted by what had transpired with Kakashi. "I do not understand your anger."

Naruto snarled. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

"The mission is my sole priority. It should be yours as well," the dark haired boy began calmly.

"Forget about the mission!" Naruto raged.

"Naruto," Sakura cut him off. She took a step forward and pulled him off Sai. "I'd like to speak with him alone."

Naruto was…concerned, some part of her realized. It had been a while since she'd seen that directed her way. She didn't know how she felt about it. She didn't _need_ it. But…

Naruto's hand tightened at his sides. He looked like he wanted to argue, but something on her face must have told him it would be futile. He left without another word.

Sakura, despite herself, was shocked by his quick acceptance. It made her wonder how unfair she must have been in the past.

No, that wasn't quite right.

What it _really_ made her wonder was if she had been as bad as Kakashi. If they had—her teeth gritted—both played a part in making Team Seven as dysfunctional as it had been.

"And what is _your_ complaint, Haruno-san?" Sai asked delicately. He had recovered slightly, returning to his normal color and begun smoothing his clothes.

Sakura's lips twisted wryly. Suddenly at ease, was he?

Her eyes scanned the thick forest surrounding them, checking for any hint of chakra. Her gaze caught something in the trees—but it wasn't a shinobi. After a brief pause, she clenched her fist and drove it toward Sai's midsection.

He blocked the blow, hands snapping from his sides to catch her fist. Her eyebrow arched; without pause, she twisted and brought her forearm against his throat, pinning him to the tree like he had been just a minute before.

Sai's face still revealed little, but his eyes had narrowed slightly.

"You're ANBU, aren't you?" Sakura demanded lowly. _I know what you've been trained to do_ , Kakashi had said. Not quite familiarity, but something like it.

His lips stretched in a thin, meaningless smile that Sakura was quickly beginning to get sick of. It reminded her of _his_ smile, when he had—

"That would require me to violate protocol, Haruno-san, if it were true."

And now she was hearing her own words echoed back to her.

"As I said before," Sai said, "I do not understand your anger."

And that was…a good question, she thought to herself. She hadn't truly been placed in danger. How could what had happened in the last twelve hours compare to what she had faced on ANBU missions in the past?

But it persisted, nevertheless.

"I do not understand your displeasure," he repeated, eyes flickering over face, "or why the copy-nin considers me to be scum."

Is that what Kakashi had told him? Sakura scoffed. Then, her mind processed belatedly what he had said. Something in them…

 _Piercing hunger,_

 _the taste of failure._

And—

 _those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum_

Air hissed out through her teeth. That.

"Do you not believe that completion of the mission is the highest obligation of a shinobi, Haruno-san?" Sai asked calmly.

Sakura's eyes snapped to his, distracted. "No."

"Oh?" He looked puzzled now, an odd innocence about him. "Then what is?"

She stared at him expressionlessly for what could have been as long as a minute. She hadn't thought her refusal through, only knew it—instinctively—to be true. Now, she searched for an explanation. He waited patiently.

"Peace," she settled with. She wanted to get back to punching Sai. It was Shisui's 'other human's' stance, she remembered vaguely. She used it now because it was convenient, a large enough concept that Sai could wrestle with it in his own time.

 _Only a fool believes a shinobi's violence can be driven by an adherence to peace._ The Crow had said it disparagingly.

She hadn't really thought about it herself much since. At all, actually.

Unfortunately, Sai wasn't finished.

"Peace?"

"Right," she said without blinking.

"A shinobi maintains order precisely by completing his," he tilted his head to her, "or her mission. This is why the mission is of the utmost importance. Above any individual. Isn't that right?"

Sakura's eyebrow twitched. She wasn't interested in a philosophical debate now—why did he have so many _questions?_ "Order…is different from peace."

"Then what is peace?"

Sakura searched the sky above her for an answer, wondering how she'd ended up here.

"It doesn't always mean completing the mission." Which, of course, explained nothing at all. But she hoped it shut him up.

"Like when a teammate's safety is at stake," Sai pondered, "Is that why Naruto and Kakashi-taichou believe I am…'scum'?"

Sakura's face contorted almost on reflex to a sneer at the copy-nin's mention. But Sai was already speaking again, something like an epiphany dawning on him.

"Enforcing peace as a shinobi means…" the black-haired shinobi murmured, eyes widening slightly. "I see. If one values a teammate, then that teammate must not be sacrificed. Taichou and dickless will uphold this value while completing their missions— _despite_ their missions. There are…certain values that cannot be sacrificed to maintain the peace, because those also contribute to the state of peace."

His words had Sakura's gaze fixated on a small ant crawling up the curves of the bark. "Violence," she muttered, "is a tool."

She turned her head and locked gazes with an unflinching, black pair of eyes.

"Violence is a tool for peace," Sai said slowly, "thus, the mission, too, is only one tool for peace."

She backed away from him, letting her forearm slide from his throat. Somehow, abruptly, her anger had receded, leaving behind only a sense of confusion.

"Teammates," the other shinobi pressed, "are they something all shinobi must hold…precious?"

Sakura's arm paused, half way down from Sai's throat.

"Would you die for a teammate?" Sai pressed.

She grunted. "That's beside—"

"For dickless?"

"Yes."

Her mouth seemed to have taken free reign. Die? For _Naruto_?

Annoying, noisy, obnoxious, all-around miscreant Naruto. The bottom-last of their class, whose apartment to this day probably violated several health codes.

…who would also readily die for her and for any of his teammates to protect them. Maybe even Sai, if the circumstances were dire enough, because he possessed precisely that kind of sentimentality.

She laughed, a bit humorlessly—and a bit surprised—to herself.

This was an unexpected development, she knew, considering where she had begun. In the beginning, she had wanted to be a shinobi to be like Ino. Then, she had thrown herself into it—there was no point disguising it for anything it wasn't—for survival.

Sakura completed her own ANBU missions because she was forced to by the crow, not because of patriotism. She reconciled herself to the violence she committed because she had been coerced to do it; when she wasn't actively killing people, she used violence only to protect herself.

But…

But, she thought with a farce of a smile, she wasn't managing very well, was she? The mountains of burned uniforms, the chafed skin around her hands from hours of scrubbing, the nights of insomnia—they could attest to that fact.

"I see," Sai said for a second time, interrupting her thoughts. Then he bowed from the waist. "I am grateful for this conversation. I see that I have much to learn."

She surveyed him closely, even as he left. He had walked away with answers; Sakura felt like she had only been burdened by questions she didn't have the time to contemplate. A frustrating outcome for an interaction she had seen going in an altogether different direction.

She reached up hands to shove her hair behind her ears. "You can come out now."

Her words were met at first with silence. Then a soft rustle sounded behind her—silk brushing leaves—and a figure emerged.

Sakura leaned back against the tree, crossing her arms across her chest.

The painter from the palanquin (Asahi, she remembered) returned her gaze evenly. Amongst the tall pine trees and the endless expanse of the sky—the battleground of so many shinobi, of blood and steel—his lounging, silken clad presence seemed utterly at odds.

"Interesting conversation you were having there. One might have thought you were scholars and not shinobi," he commented lightly. "Did you both know I was here?"

Sakura inclined her head slightly. Yes. And a genin would been able to tell.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked. "It's late. As you saw, the woods are not always safe."

He didn't respond immediately, taking the time to remove a leaf that had fallen from the canopy above him onto his shoulder.

Then he looked up, blue eyes piercing. "I think you are like me, Haruno-san."

She was nonplussed at first. Then, understanding dawned.

"I don't mean that," Asahi laughed gently. "Well, not exactly that. You and I, Haruno-san—I have the sense that you too are not what you seem."

" _Are_ you a woman?" Sakura asked bluntly.

But Asahi just ran a smooth hand down the length of his—her?—loose braid. It looked like a black snake curling its way down his shoulder.

"Woman, man," he considered them lazily, "Both suit. I also, incidentally, like to fuck both."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Why are you here?"

"Well, I owe you." The painter's voice was still playful, but delivered through suddenly tight lips.

"Do you?"

"Of course. You saved the only daughter of the royal house that is my benefactor." Vulgarity followed. "She has _the_ most sinful ankles, you know. It would have been such a loss. She could make a killing with those in my old line of work."

Sakura paid no attention to the words. She arched a brow, waiting.

Eventually, Asahi reached pulled out a scroll. Sakura took it and opened it.

"What is this?" she asked after a moment.

"For your back, I would think," the painter said, blue eyes glinting. "Give it to an ANBU tattoo artist. They'll do it justice."

Sakura closed it and tucked it indifferently to her belt. "If that's all—good night."

"Good night, Haruno-san."

The painter turned in a swirl of silk and headed back toward the palanquin.

"I noticed," Sakura called out a few seconds later.

The delicate face turned back in question.

"You moved when they entered. In front of her."

Pink lips curled beneath warning, blue eyes. "Did I?"

"Don't be alarmed, Asahi-san," Sakura said wryly. "I'll keep your secret if you keep mine." The painter had seen her threaten Sai, after all. And it wouldn't do to have that kind of thing going around.

The former kagema's eyes fluttered. "Well, then. I hope you enjoy your gift."

* * *

Sakura wasn't actually surprised to find herself in Tsunade's office with the copy-nin less than two hours after returning from their mission.

The hokage looked up from the mountains of paper on her desk with a fierce glare, amber eyes flashing in warning at their entrance. Sakura's gaze drifted to the untouched sake settled on the window sill. Apparently, Tsunade had been too busy to drink herself today to her usual mellow buzz, which didn't exactly bode well for her current mood.

But if her jounin captain was concerned, he certainly didn't show it. He seemed impervious to Shizune's glower as he tracked mud onto the previously pristine floor, settling against the side of bookcase with feline grace.

Tsunade glanced at him and then to Sakura. She addressed her remarks to the latter. "Why are you here?"

Sakura kept the glare off her face with difficulty, striving for indifference. "I'm afraid you'll have to ask him, Tsunade-sama."

The older woman scoffed, wisps of blond hair flaring with the exhalation of breath. Then she turned to Kakashi and demanded: " _Well_?"

Kakashi's head rolled to meet hers lazily, but his eyes were steely. "I want her off."

Tsunade repeated the word soundlessly. "Off. Off? Off what, Hatake? The roster for the yearly Konoha fly fishing competition? You're going to need to be more specific."

The copy-nin's eyes crinkled. The look in them was not pleasant. "Team Seven."

The hokage's lips thinned into a tight line. "Not this again."

"I want her off," Kakashi continued uncaringly, voice cold. "Now."

Tsunade's hands tightened into vicious fists, like she wished she could strangle him. Sakura sorely wished the same.

"Why?" the woman snapped finally, temper tenuously held back.

He pushed away from the bookshelf, standing at his full, imposing height as he delivered his words. "She's a liability."

"She's my student," Tsunade said warningly.

"So make her a full medic-nin."

"I believe with time," the hokage said through gritted teeth, "she can be _more_ than that."

Kakashi looked imperiously down at the leader of one of the most powerful shinobi villages in the world.

"There isn't enough time in a human's life span for her to achieve that."

Sakura saw the blow land. Tsunade wasn't quick enough to hide her flinch, or the flicker of doubt that passed through her features. Sakura's stomach clenched. She knew she hadn't been as available to meet with Tsunade for lessons in recent years, thanks to the Crow. But she _had_ tried her best.

Only, now even the woman who had given her her first life line couldn't speak up for her.

"Tsunade-sama," she said lowly. Her mentor's attention went to her immediately.

"Yes," Tsunade said, blinking rapidly. "You. What do you have to say?"

"I'm staying," she said unflinchingly, back straight.

Leaving Team Seven wasn't going to remove her from active shinobi life. The crow would probably kill itself before it let _that_ happen. Ironically, in fact, Team Seven offered a mostly benign distraction to the other parts of her life ( _despite_ Kakashi being their jounin captain). Sai was a piece of shit, possibly with potential redeeming qualities she had yet to find. And Naruto was—well, she owed a lot to Naruto.

The point was, she wasn't leaving Team Seven.

Funnily enough, her words were all it took.

"Alright," Tsunade breathed, reaching behind for her sake and taking a deep gulp. "That settles it. She stays."

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"I would," Kakashi said stiltedly, eyes slitted, "advise you to revise that decision, hokage- _sama_."

The hokage looked up at him with a thunderous look on her face. "I would advise _you_ to remember where you stand in this hierarchy, Hatake. You're not here yet; and if your current inability to curb your more insubordinate and frankly violent tendencies continues, you never will be."

The sound of a blade being unsheathed cut through the air in a brutal hiss. Tsunade was standing now; Shizune's hands were sheathed in blue chakra.

"I might as well kill her now," Kakashi said lazily. He tilted his head to the side, looking down at the hokage callously.

"Sakura, see yourself out." Tsunade bit out. "Your taichou and I have a few matters to discuss."

Sakura looked at her mentor in disbelief. _Leave_? That was the last thing she wanted to do right now. Did Kakashi really intend to use his blade against her? _Execute_ Sakura to save their opponents the trouble?

 _Let him try_ , the Voice snarled, _we'll tear into him before he knows which way's up_.

She pretended she didn't hear the slight trepidation in the Voice's words.

"Get out, Sakura," Tsunade growled again, slamming both hands flat against the wood of her desk.

Sakura's eyes jerked back to her at the loud noise. At Tsunade's expression, Sakura grimaced and then gave in.

She spun on her heel and didn't look back.

* * *

 **A Belated Omake (** ** _to make up for my absence! 3)_**

Hyuuga Hinata liked mornings. She liked the crisper than usual breeze, long before the sun had warmed the earth. She liked the quiet and the calm, before the bustling of midday. And above all else, she liked the piping hot, shincha (picked earliest in the season and the sweetest) her favorite teahouse offered its early guests at discount that time of day.

It was a small teashop, worn and homely. Nevertheless, it found more than its fair share of customers.

Possibly because it was positioned right opposite Konoha's best purveyor of ramen.

(So, maybe the tea wasn't the only reason Hinata was drawn to the teahouse).

As it happened, Hinata had spent many mornings, afternoons, and evenings in this particular booth. The shincha really was excellent. And—well, it wasn't so much _stalking_ as—appreciating the view. She was simply appreciating the view.

The shopkeeper had caught her once or twice (actually, every time after the first), but _he_ had never noticed. Which didn't actually surprise her. Naruto attacked his ramen with the kind of one-track mindedness that was genuinely frightening.

And, well, it was the perfect start to her day. For reasons. Even if, nutritionally, she really couldn't condone the consumption of ramen for breakfast.

With a relaxed sigh, she finished off the last of her shincha. It was much needed fuel for what was looking to be a long day.

An ANBU had been dropped off the night before with first degree burns all over his body. The emergency team had worked until nearly dawn to stabilize him. Now, it was time for Hinata and her team to come in to finish the healing process.

It was looking to be a full day of work. Which, normally, Hinata wouldn't mind, except that she had recently been placed in charge of individuals who had formerly been her peers. Peers who had all but told her the previous day that, no, they weren't inclined to listen to her because they _very much_ felt she had been chosen only because she was the hokage's chosen apprentice. Never mind that all their applications had been reviewed by a third party counsel, or that all their names had been stricken out, or that they had all been evaluated solely on the basis of their track records.

Hinata wasn't a person who conscionably entertained violent thoughts (entirely why her career as a field medic-nin had turned out the way it had). But, now, even she was sorely tempted to let _one_ Gentle Fist…

She shook the horrible thought away, a frown on her face.

It was simply that—she felt she had finally found her place. Hinata hadn't been good as a combat shinobi because she hadn't _wanted_ to be. But in the hospital, she _wanted_ to be good. And she was good. It _felt_ good. A calm she had never felt before washed over whenever a critical patient was placed in front of her. In the surgery room, it wasn't hard for her to take command.

Ironically, it was exactly as her father abandoned the idea of her as clan leader, that Hinata began to see it as…possible. Hyuuga Hiashi, of course, did not think someone who had never killed, never 'sacrificed' (as he put it), could lead them.

Hinata privately thought this...close-minded.

As though she didn't make sacrifices each day in the surgery room—cutting the limb to save the life; letting someone go blind to save his chakra paths; focusing more attention on a daughter than her father because she had a better chance of survival and they only had so much time before both were dead.

Hinata, like any combat shinobi, had had a hand in the death of countless individuals as a medic-nin. Unlike combat shinobi, she had not intended for it to end that way. It _was_ a burden on her conscience, each life she lost. But it was one she could live with; killing had not been.

Suddenly realizing how hard she was gripping the cup in her hands, Hinata let go of it abruptly. It clacked against the wooden table with a high ring, but thankfully, did not break.

Setting it aright, she lowered her head and gave a relieved sigh—

"Hi."

Her head darted up. Hinata blinked when piercing blue eyes met hers, then felt her face redden.

"I, uh," Naruto scratched his head, "saw you. From there—" he pointed demonstratively at Ichiraku Ramen—"though I'd swing by and say hi."

Hinata swallowed with difficulty. Her throat was so dry.

"Hi," she croaked finally.

"Right," Naruto said, staring strangely at her. "I wanted to thank you. For taking care of me in the hospital. And that ointment! It worked really well."

He beamed at her.

"I'm glad." But then Hinata frowned, remembering something. "Y-you know, you never told me how you got those injuries."

"Oh," Naruto said, eyes widening slightly. He squinted up at the ceiling. "Well, see, there was this _thing,_ and then _that_ happened, you know? So, it sort of just…It really was an accident—"

"Naruto-kun," she said. "It's not right to lie to a medical professional."

Her voice was still quiet, so she was taken aback when Naruto froze like she had barked at him.

She regretted that, a little. But she didn't take it back. She had seen enough wounds to know the ones on Naruto had not been accidental. They had been made with almost surgical precision—intended, not to harm the most, but certainly to _hurt_ the most. To teach a lesson.

And the thought of anyone touching Naruto like that made her—made her—

"It was a training session," he answered lowly.

Hinata's eyes flew wide open. " _Sakura_ -san did that to you?"

"No, no," Naruto said, waving his hands as though to bat the accusation away. "She's actually a lot nicer now."

Understanding chilled Hinata's body, causing hair to raise on her flesh. "Then Kakashi-san did. H-he _hurt_ you like that."

Naruto looked at her, his face grim and somehow so—so young. After a moment, he nodded shakily.

And Hinata was…

"H-Hinata," Naruto stammered now, "Are you okay? You look really pale. Are you going to faint again—"

"No!"

"You're yelling," he said dazedly. Then his forehead scrunched. "I didn't know you could. Wait, why are you yelling?"

Because Hinata was _furious_.

"Every shinobi has to go through a yearly checkup," she muttered to herself, "If I move things around—y-yes, I could manage that. It's a little below my position, but it wouldn't look _too_ odd. I can be there—"

"Are you going to _hurt_ him?!" Naruto gleaned from this, arms flapping. "No—no you shouldn't. You're a doctor, you can't…"

Hurt a patient? Oh, yes she could. Funny how until two minutes ago, Hinata hadn't thought her conscience could condone such a thing.

Now? It definitely _could_.

"—I just, I don't get why?" he finished mumbling, "Why do you care at all?"

"Because I take care of what's mine," Hinata snapped, "and what he did—"

Wait.

A minute.

 _What did she say_?

It took what seemed like an infinity for her gaze to reach Naruto's face. Terror had stolen speech from her. She gaped as her eyes landed on a red face and wide, blue eyes.

She—she had just as good as run him off for good now, hadn't she? Oh god, oh god, _oh god_ …

"Ahhh," Naruto wheezed, "whaaa…I didn't—I mean, did you—"

Her face was beet red. She did actually feel like she was going to faint any second, actually.

But….then she noticed that Naruto didn't exactly look… _disgusted_. He looked surprised. But also…his face was red…just like hers. And he wasn't running, exactly, was he?

Maybe it was…Could it be? That this was…the _best_ teahouse in the world?

"Huh," Naruto finished dazedly.

Possibly.

* * *

 **Author's Note: Please review! Some exciting *developments* between Kakashi/Sakura about to come :D**


	10. Chapter 10: Oiran

**Note:** Update 3 of 4 on Jan. 7

* * *

Kakashi was a feral, out-of-control menace that threatened to do Konoha just as much if not more harm than he did good.

This is what Sakura had decided in the past week.

 _He needs to be put down,_ the Voice growled.

Sakura had also decided she would like very much to be the one who put him down.

Unfortunately, this was an impossible task at the moment.

"Your genjutsu technique is improving," the crow commented, interrupting her thoughts. The words were delivered indifferently.

Sakura straightened, wiping sweat off her face. "You said before that I could use you to produce better genjutsus. How do I do that?"

Shisui's wings fluttered rapidly, propelling it into brief flight before it landed on the bench next to her. It cocked its head to the side; the spinning sharingan bored into her.

"I suppose you're nearly there," it settled with. Something like a garish smile crossed the crow's features—only it wasn't quite a smile, because it was not human.

"There are rituals," Shisui told her, "that allow a summon and its summoner to share certain abilities, as if they are one."

"Your eye," Sakura guessed, a sour feeling in her stomach.

"The sharingan is a tool of illusion. Born of hatred and despair, the self learns to deceive and to see deception. When Uchihas confront this phenomenon, their eyes learn to do the same. Your eyes will see through mine, will use mine, to do the same."

Sakura leaned back into the bench, keeping her voice deliberately light. "Your other…contractee. Did he give you that sharingan?"

It pecked punishingly at her, drawing blood. For Shisui, she knew, this was its literal manifestation of biting amusement.

"You've grown bolder."

Sakura listed off to the blue sky. "You have a sharingan. You've taught me fire techniques that only… they know." That she had only ever seen Sasuke use.

"This is true."

Her gaze flicked to it and then away. "So it is true."

Not Sasuke, she knew. That left…the other one. _I-ta-chi_. Weasel.

Sakura paused, a metallic taste in her mouth.

"If your other master and I were ever to fight each other, who would you protect?"

The crow smirked. Then, Shisui descended from her shoulder to her lap, digging claws into her skin through layers of cloth.

"Shall I tell you a secret?"

Sakura peered down at it dryly.

"I hold secrets very dearly, girl," the crow said in a deathly whisper. "I tell you this because, at that critical moment, you must remember this."

She was unimpressed. "Go on, then."

It looked up at her, eyes burning straight through her. "You will never stand on opposite sides."

Sakura blinked at it. "Right."

"It is true."

"Well, I don't believe it."

"You will come to," the crow said genially. The crow cawed loudly, a cruel laugh. When she blinked again, she was alone, sitting on a bench in the middle of an abandoned park. Shisui had broken the genjutsu and left.

It couldn't be true, she decided. God, the crow had been feeding her rot since the beginning. _Peace_ —sure, only if Sasuke's brother had a truly twisted conception of it.

So she resolved to forget about Shisui's words entirely, and headed to the bookstore on the other side of the park.

* * *

"We need to talk," Naruto announced.

Sakura coughed under her breath. It was a stunning coincidence, after all, that she, Naruto, and Sai had ended up in the same exact bookstore at 5 o'clock that afternoon. So much so, that it could not be a coincidence at all.

She placed the book in her hand back onto its shelf.

Sakura hadn't seen either of them for days, because Team Seven's training had been called off indefinitely. She suspected it had to do with something like a strong-arming effort on Kakashi's part against Tsunade.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Naruto straightened sharply. "Nothing. Well—a lot, actually. We need to talk if this is going to work."

"Did you have such a discussion with the traitor Uchiha?" Sai asked innocently.

Naruto's features contorted in a snarl. "Don't call him that."

"Ok." Sakura said swiftly. "Let's talk. The park's right out there."

"This is fine with me as well," Sai said now, nodding seriously. "I read that communication is critical to the progression of any relationship—"

"Cool." Naruto said with forced calm.

"—certainly before any sexual activity," Sai added casually.

"No sexual activity," the blonde burst out, eyes wide in alarm.

"Of course. Not with that small dick."

"I'm _going to kill you_ —"

Sakura grabbed them both by the collar and dragged them out of the bookstore to the park nearby. When she dumped them on the ground, Naruto rubbed the front of his neck ruefully.

But Sai had something to say. "You do that a lot, I've noticed. Are you into that kind of thing, Sakura-san?"

Sakura ignored him.

"Well?" she prompted Naruto.

He sighed, and his expression grew hard. "We don't abandon teammates, no matter what. We don't _sacrifice_ teammates, no matter what. That's my ninja way, and I won't watch anyone else do it. Okay?"

He looked only at Sai.

"I understand, now," Sai responded slowly. His brows were furrowed. "Mostly. I'm still working out the minutiae of the rationale, but—I will act accordingly."

Naruto looked skeptical, but he clenched his jaw and nodded sharply. "Ok. I'm going to trust you."

Sai nodded back solemnly.

"Ok, next." Naruto swallowed sharply. "Honesty."

She stiffened. Then, she saw Naruto himself blanche. That was unexpected.

He looked back at both of them. His face was full of fear.

"Naruto?" she asked quietly.

He told them the story of the nine-tailed beast.

She didn't know what she looked like by the end, but her insides ached with shock. Now that she knew, of course, she could see the signs.

"Do you think I'm a monster?" It was clearly a question that had been weighing on him some time.

Sakura glared. "No. What it did is not what _you_ did." If only she could say the same about her and the Voice.

"Indeed," Sai said blankly.

"And what about you Sai?" Sakura said sharply. "Why don't you tell us who you actually are."

Sai smiled generously. "I can't say."

"You don't get to do that," Naruto growled.

"I can't say," Sai repeated.

"And _I said_ that you don't get to do that—"

"Naruto," Sakura cut him off, "I think he literally can't. He must be sealed."

Naruto's mouth opened and closed. "What?"

"I know he's ANBU, though."

The blonde pivoted with incredible speed, face red. "He's _ANBU_? Gaara's already kazekage, _Sai_ is in ANBU, and look at me—"

"Stay away from ANBU," Sakura cut him off sharply.

He recoiled, looking hurt. "You know, I _am_ working hard."

She exhaled impatiently. "I don't mean that. I just mean that you would hate ANBU. You _should_ hate it. It represents almost everything that violates your—your ninja way."

"Oh. Really? I mean, I don't _actually_ know what ANBU does, just heard someone mention it…." He looked pensive now. "Well, straight to hokage was the original plan anyway. Yeah, I can make that work."

"Sure, dickless," Sai scoffed.

"Shut up."

Sai's attention thankfully moved to her before the matter could escalate.

"I suppose I owe you an apology, Sakura-san. I would like to repay you," the boy said stoically.

"Don't worry about it."

"I insist," Sai said seriously. "I do not believe we can begin again as a team until I have repaid you. The book I'm reading says that no relationship can progress before all wrongs in the past have been properly addressed."

"That's right," Naruto said stubbornly.

Sakura looked tiredly at the both of them. "Fine," she sighed. "What's on the table?"

He pursed his lips. "I could kill someone for you," he considered.

 _We can do that ourselves_ , the Voice rumbled throatily.

"Hey!" Naruto shouted.

"Something else."

"Well. I am also…rather good at art."

Sakura laughed under her breath. Funny, that. She had never thought about it before (beyond the mandatory ANBU tattoo her false identity had been required to have). But then the painter—Asahi—had given her that scroll. And she had yet to remove it from her pack.

She never would have taken the initiative to search out a shinobi to do the job—this was true. But now such a shinobi had practically fallen into her lap. And he owed her a favor. And she just wanted that favor over with. (And, somehow, the idea of marking her body in a way that wasn't a scar or a burn wasn't entirely…unappealing).

"Have you ever done a tattoo?" Naruto gaped at her.

"I have…come across it," Sai answered.

"In that case." She pulled the scroll out and unrolled it. "This. I guess on my back. And then we call it quits."

"Wow," Naruto breathed.

It _was_ impressive. Mihiko hadn't been lying when she suggested Asahi was talented; he was clearly the kind of artist rumored to sell their soul to be granted such talent.

"Ah," Sai said calmly.

Two figures met their gazes, drawn in a style intended to evoke the art of the temples. One figure's face was hidden—the woman's. One of her arms arched up above her head and then bent down, wielding a fan that covered most of her face and revealed only smiling lips, simply painted. Her dress was also tied simply, but from cloth in hues of such deep blues and reds that it looked bafflingly indulgent. Her other hand held an amulet. Her whole body was curved toward the other figure, as though she would just as easily dance with it as attack it into submission.

For the woman faced a demon—the second central figure, rendered in vicious reds and blacks. Its body was covered in ancient armor. A violent smile decorated its face, telling both of bloodthirst and of amusement. It, too, curled toward its opponent, caught indefinitely in a state of both attraction and repulsion.

Between the two figures were elements of smoke and other iconography common to the genre.

Those were Sai's words, not her own. He had picked up the painting and begun to explain its composition with something like passion in his voice.

The painting, he continued, was in the deep, rich colors of classic irezumi, but with such devastating elegance that it surpassed all that he had seen before—

"How long will it take?" she interrupted.

Sai paused. "Two hours because of the complexity. But it will be done by sunset."

She paused now. "Do I have to do anything to prevent infection?"

She didn't know much about tattoos. Shinobi wore them like scars. In the civilian world, only criminals had them.

"Not with this method," Sai said. "Now, then. Shirt off, please."

"Wait, wait, wait," Naruto said hastily. "You're doing it _here_?"

Sai looked at him without comprehension. "I prefer natural lighting. Also, this is an abandoned park. That means no one maintains it. Which means no one comes here."

"But _we're_ here," Naruto argued with panic, gaze darting around as though he expected someone to jump out of the bushes. "People come here. We're people."

"We'll sense them," Sakura said. Then she remembered who she was talking to and corrected herself. "Sai or I will."

"But _Sakura_ —"

She turned away from them and pulled off her flak jacket, then the shirt beneath. The ANBU tattoo on her arm was hidden by the jutsu she almost always used before she left the house.

"Do I need to remove this?" Sakura asked, referring to her bound chest.

Sai seemed paused to think about this. Finally, he said, "No. I can work around it. One hand makes the jutsus; the other needs to be in contact with the skin where they're being applied. I will have to reach under the bandage for those parts on your back, but I do not need to remove it."

"Good." She put her flak jacket down on the grass and then lay on her stomach on top of it. "Go on."

She heard Sai pull some more things out of his satchel, before a cool hand rested on her lower back. A second later, a painful, burning sensation made her skin throb violently. She gritted her teeth, but withstood it without flinching.

"I've been told it hurts more this way," Sai said conversationally. "About a thousand times more. Usually, only shinobi can stand this. And some civilian women who have been through labor. They've said that was worse, actually—"

"Why do you have so many scars?" Naruto burst out, sounding disturbed.

Sakura paused, nostrils flaring. "I'm a shinobi," she said lightly, after a moment. "Don't you have scars?"

"No," Naruto said. "I don't have any."

"That's probably because of the tailed-beast," Sai intoned helpfully.

"Right. The scars are normal," Sakura grunted.

"Oh," Naruto said, sounding calmer. "Huh. Who knew Kurama would be useful that way!"

The conversation elapsed into silence for a while. Until Naruto spoke up again, two hours later.

"So. Can I get one too? Like a _dragon_ or something? You know— _cool_."

* * *

Three days later, her back felt just as it had every other day of her life.

A good thing—because three days later, she was called for another mission with the copy-nin's ANBU team.

She stumbled out of her bed that morning in a foul temper. She had fallen asleep later the previous night than she had wanted. Then, she had woken up late. As a result, she was forced to forgo breakfast, instead showering hastily and then hurriedly applying the jutsus to change her build and her features.

Although she had done it many times, watching her features morph into the olive-toned, inconspicuous ones of Saori Mori was still an unnerving experience. Avoiding her reflection, she tied the thin brown hair on her head up in a ponytail and set her mask in place.

She scanned herself one more time to make sure nothing would betray her; then she left her apartment and traveled the roofs of Konoha to ANBU headquarters.

Just as she passed through the doors, she realized that it hadn't even occurred to her to cover the newest addition to her back. She hesitated for a moment, debated sneaking into a stall to fix it. Her gaze fell on the clock. Ultimately, she continued inside. The only people who knew it existed on 'Haruno Sakura' were Sai and Naruto, after all.

"Meeting room 13A," Panther called out from behind her, sipping the last of her morning coffee beneath her mask.

"Thanks," Sakura muttered, sending her a distracted wave without turning back.

Stalking her way down the hall, she stopped at the worn, wooden door and gently pushed it open.

"Late," a low, rough voice said coldly.

Sakura scoffed below her breath. She realized only when Hyena stared at her with incredulous eyes that she hadn't done as good a job at hiding her animosity as she might have wanted. Moving away from the door, she sat down at the opposite end of the table without another sound. Bear straightened in his chair, sending Sakura a warning look.

"Right," Kakashi's second-in-command said. "Let's get started, then. Taichou?"

To Sakura's immense surprise, Kakashi stood up. The tilted chair he had effortlessly been balancing on—with both feet on the table—smacked to the ground with a dull thud.

"Scout teams have pinpointed Kino's location."

Sakura had never heard the name 'Kino' before, but it was clear the rest of Kakashi's team had. They all straightened in their chairs. Hyena picked up the scroll resting on the table.

"Finally," Bear growled.

Even Snail sounded cold. "Mouse died for that bastard."

"Where's he been?" Raccoon asked quietly.

"Deep undercover for the past six months," Hyena read from the scroll, eyes angry behind her mask. "Posing as a butcher just on the other side of the border _._ "

"Smart," Raccoon said softly, shoulder tight. "We were looking for someone running—strangers passing through villages. And he went straight there and just settled down."

The amount of killing intent in the room was the most she had ever felt from Bear, Hyena, Snail, or Raccoon. And she had been on _slaughter_ missions with them before.

"What's our play?" Snail asked.

"Kino was a genjutsu specialist," the copy-nin remarked coolly. "Crow and I will infiltrate. We will execute him."

Silence met his words.

"What about us?" Bear demanded, voice rough.

"You will dismantle his network of contacts, the ones who helped hide him," Kakashi answered. His tone brooked no argument.

Bear and Snail looked like they very much _wanted_ to argue. The skin around their eyes was pinched. And yet, Sakura found, they voiced no protest. Whoever Kino was—he was obviously someone they wanted to face themselves. Possibly, for closure. But Kakashi seemed to run his team as tyrannically he did Team Seven.

Sakura scowled behind her mask. She wondered why she had been chosen to assist Kakashi.

"We leave in ten," he finished, departing from the room.

Hyena patted Bear's arm and Snail's shoulder and then followed.

* * *

Four hours later, Sakura and the copy-nin stood beneath a giant oak tree, a kilometer away from a modest shack at the edge of a modest village.

A gust of wind blew, rustling the matching black hair on her and Kakashi's head. They both stood almost a meter shorter than usual—just a brother and his sister, running a small errand.

Quietly, Sakura followed the copy-nin as he stalked to the door and knocked.

The wooden door swung open, revealing a large, grizzled man with red hair and a face with long, smile lines.

"Well, what d'you want?" the man asked, squinting down at them.

"Kaa-san wants cow meat," Kakashi said impetuously. "Let us in already, it's cold."

The man raised an eyebrow. After a moment, his gaze left him and turned to Sakura.

"Please, sir?" she asked. "He gets _annoying_ when he nags."

"Does he?" Kino chuckled. "Well then, I guess I better get you two what you need, then."

He turned his back to them to go inside.

A second later, she ducked just as Kino's arm snapped back out, hurling a fuuma shuriken that would have decapitated her.

"Kaido!" the red-haired man bellowed. " _Run!_ "

Sakura didn't know who Kaido was. At the moment, she didn't particularly care. Releasing the jutsu disguising her features, she felt herself grow to her usual height as she darted between exploding kunai.

Which—honestly—was rather juvenile for an ex-ANBU. She knew sometimes simple could be best. But, for god's sake, Kino knew he was facing the copy-nin now. Kunai were hardly going to kill _him_.

Speaking of which, Kakashi merely stood placidly beside her at his full height, black mask beneath tell-tale steely grey and sharingan red eyes. The fuuma shuriken was held aloft almost lazily in his hand.

"Switching to new toys now?" the copy-nin asked tonelessly.

Kino made rapid hand signals. Sakura felt the brief, jarring moment when the genjutsu slipped over her. The world vibrated for a moment, a buzz sounded in her ears. And then she found herself in the middle of a battlefield.

A mountain of bodies towered over her. Faces she knew peered at her from out of the pile, features twisted in agony. Every face she knew was there: Naruto, Sasuke, Ino, the rest of her year, her parents, her primary school teacher, even _Sai_ …

Calloused hands grabbed her from behind, cutting off the circulation in her shoulders.

"You're just like me," it whispered, voice inhuman. "A _monster._ "

"Kai," Sakura said coldly, clapping her hands together.

The world melted way, dark colors running like viscous oil as they withdrew. She saw that Kakashi had broken the genjutsu before she had, probably because of the sharingan. He spun the fuuma shuriken—a weapon she had never seen him use before—with deadly skill.

Sakura squinted at him, wondering why he hadn't attacked yet.

Kino barked out a loud laugh. "Alas, I'm no match for Konoha's rabid dog, am I?"

Kakashi's voice was arctic. "You should have thought of that before you betrayed Konoha."

The large man shrugged. "I'm a simple man, you know? They offered me a cushier deal. Of course, I do appreciate the irony of how it all turned out, seeing where I am now."

"Mouse died because of you," Sakura said stiffly, feeling dutybound to relay Snail's words in her absence.

Kino grimaced at her. "Do I know you? Don't remember. Mouse—yes, that was regrettable. Liked her, you know."

He looked up at the sky for a moment, something eerily nostalgic on his face. "Mouse," he muttered. "Funny woman."

His head dropped to Kakashi abruptly. "You going to kill me now?"

But Sakura's gaze narrowed, now, remembering something she had previously ignored. "Why don't you tell us who Kaido is?"

At those words, Kino's entire demeanor changed. Something terrifying possessed the man's face, twisting it into something unbelievably angry. "You piece of _shit_. You'd go so low?"

Sakura's jaw slackened, shocked by his sudden vitriol. His large frame trembled and then suddenly he was in front of her, on the offensive as though he hadn't seemed ready to accept death seconds earlier.

He was a physically imposing man. But his strength was nothing compared to hers. Each contact shattered bones beneath his skin. He noticed quickly, making hand signals in a shift to ninjutsu instead.

Halfway through the second sign, his head suddenly jerked to the left. Instinctively, Sakura's head followed. A pale hand flashed over his shoulder through where his head had been, cased in crackling electricity.

His fingers speared the space millimeters from where her own head formerly was.

Scowling, Sakura's hands snapped forward and grabbed the copy-nin's wrist (below the still crackling chakra). Propping her foot on Kino's thigh, she hefted upward and flipped Kakashi over the taller man's shoulder.

He twisted midair—a terrifying blur—his other hand already lunging out to finish the job. This time, the blow landed, gliding through bone, flesh, and blood like they were little more than butter.

Kino gave a terrible groan, crumpling to his knees. Kakashi pulled his hand out, towering over him like a vengeful demon.

Sakura hung back, wiping her blade clear of blood on the grass.

"You going to make it a slow one, _taichou_?" Kino hissed. "Gonna let me bleed slowly?"

Kakashi was silent for a moment. For a long time, they simply stared at each other.

"I see. You're a _man_ now, aren't you," the man laughed humorlessly. "No longer the boy-captain who commanded ANBU hand spans taller than he was."

Kakashi was silent still. But a second later, his hand lit up again, the deafening sound of a thousand birds filling the forest.

Kino grinned like a shark.

But as his hand arced downwards, a form blurred into existence in front of Kino's. Kino roared, a sudden wordless vocalization of terror.

And Kakashi's hand froze.

In a terribly unfunny repetition of events, another boy glared up at the copy-nin, protecting the man behind him from chidori.

"Kaido," Kino hissed. "I told you to _run_."

"Move, boy," Kakashi commanded, face unreadable.

"NO!" Kaido screamed, arms flung out in front of the large man. He had red hair too. "Can't you leave him alone? Can't you all _just leave him alone!_ "

"Is he your father?" Sakura asked with difficulty.

"He's all I have left," the boy spat at her. "I don't care what he did. I—He's all I have left. _Please._ "

"I can't," Kakashi answered callously, gazing straight ahead of him.

Her body tensed at his words, wondering why the copy-nin hadn't lied. Why he hadn't said something else just to get the boy away.

"Then," Kaido panted, chest heaving, "then you're forcing me to do _this_."

He opened his palm, revealing an explosive that—with one small hand sign—would blast them all straight to hell.

 _Fuck_ , the Voice grumbled.

"Hey, look at me," Sakura said softly. Even though she was farther away, she crouched low so that she was near the boy's height. "He's already dying. Don't risk your life now. Mourn him. Then avenge him, if you have to."

The boy's trembling shoulders stilled abruptly. "A-already dying?" he asked woodenly.

"Move, boy," Kakashi repeated, voice dark and uncharacteristically urgent now.

"Run, Kaido!" Kino shouted, face puce. "For god's sake, you stupid boy—"

"I can't," Kaido wept, "I can't leave you. I'd rather— _you know_ I'd rather."

" _Move_."

Sakura froze at this softer imperative, piercing even through Kino's wordless bellowing. It had been almost soundless, a harsh whisper. She had only just heard it.

It was unmistakable.

(The sound of the terrible copy-nin, killer of thousands—had she imagined it?—begging.)

But the boy had already chosen. His fingers twitched infinitesimally, rotating in just the right directions—and Kakashi's tanto swung out, swift and ruthless, decapitating him.

And Kino screamed.

The sound was terrible, as though his own heart had been scooped out of his chest. Sakura flinched. She had heard men and women burn alive—and even then, they hadn't sounded like that.

The terrible noise stopped only when Kakashi cut off his head too.

Kakashi held the dripping tanto in his hand, staring at the two fallen heads like he had never seen anything like them before.

She stood silently behind him. Her ears were…ringing. She wondered if there _had_ been an explosion, only she hadn't noticed.

The wind blew again, rattling the rickety shutter doors of the shack. Goosebumps sprouted all along her arms.

Between that breeze and the next, the rest of the ANBU team appeared.

"The targets were dealt with, taichou," Hyena murmured.

Bear leaned forward with interest, pupils dilated. Considering his personal animus against Kino, Sakura supposed, she shouldn't have been surprised.

"God, I wish I'd been here for this," the ANBU said, voice low and mean. "Who the fuck's next to him? Did you give them hell, taich—"

Kakashi's crackling fist landed in the tree right to the left of his head. Singed chunks of hair fell in clumps onto Bear's uniform. But it didn't stop there. The lightning in the copy-nin's hands only seemed to grow brighter, bigger. Black spots flashed across her vision. And the noise was _painful_ now _,_ like knives stabbing her ear drums—

Dazedly, Sakura felt a hand fasten around her upper arm. They were shunshining, she realized belatedly, she and the person holding her.

When the ground beneath her feet settled again, she found herself kilometers away from where she had been seconds ago.

In the distance, great bolts of electricity lit the sky, brightening the dark clouds above for seconds at a time. It seemed as though the heavens had released lightning, but without rain or thunder as nature normally dictated.

"Fuck," she heard Bear curse behind her. She turned and saw them all: Bear, Hyena, Snail, and Raccoon.

"I thought you were dead meat," Snail said shakily.

"He almost was," Hyena said coldly.

Bear's shoulders tightened. Sakura watched them all like they were bizarre puppets she had seen move of their own volition.

"Well," she asked impatiently. "Shouldn't we go back?"

All eyes snapped to her, incredulous.

"No," Raccoon said quiet, reasonable. "We wait here."

Her lips twisted. "How long?"

"Until it passes," Hyena answered gravely.

"But he's going to alert every enemy-nin in a fifty kilometer radius that we're here."

The team shrugged like it was used to this. "He takes care of it."

Sakura exhaled. "You can't be serious."

"Crow," Snail said with forced calm. "I know you haven't been on this team for long. But trying to intervene in _that_ is a fool's errand. You'll end up dead, trust me."

She should, Sakura thought, stepping away. She _should_ trust them, their expert opinion on how to handle this. They'd probably been on this team for ages, knew Kakashi like the back of their hands.

She should, honestly, trust them and do exactly as they say.

Only, the sound of Kakashi whispering _Move_ was echoing like a broken track record in her mind, over and over again, an alien, disturbing thing that had her teeth on edge.

And beneath that—

 _those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum_

God, Sakura thought, tilting her head up to the sky. She really, _really_ wanted to kill him.

Before she had consciously decided it, her body flickered and then disappeared.

* * *

Naturally, he _did_ try to kill her.

He was quick too—too quick. She couldn't even see his face. In a blur, he was zig-zagging toward her, and she moved forward, flesh, bone, and muscle all burning, to meet him.

The weather had also changed for the worse in the seconds it had taken her to arrive there. As though called by the false-lightning, rain poured from the heavens, masking both their scents and making it exceptionally hard to see.

As it happened, however, Sakura didn't need her other senses. Soon, his body was so close that it didn't matter.

She defended with her shoulders hunched, frame tight and aggressive like a brawler's, before feinting to the side and then twisting over him—heat burning through her clothes at the contact.

Without pause, Sakura gathered chakra into her fist and drove it at his midsection. He shifted with blinding speed. The blow didn't make contact, her arm merely brushing along his ribcage. Unfortunately, the momentum of the punch carried her forward, and he took the opportunity to her cage her in.

A second later, she yanked her head to the side, the side of his hand just glancing her hair. The rush of air sent the rest of the strands flying back. His fist went into the tree.

Sakura twisted and her own fist finally landed. A swift, brutal uppercut that he avoided the full force of with lightning quickness, but still skimmed his cheekbone.

He snarled, a guttural, animalistic sound, sharingan spinning madly in his eye.

"Stop," Sakura growled.

Pushing off against the tree, she snapped her neck back and then forward, drilling her forehead into his. He grunted.

And then punishing arms wrapped around her midsection and tossed her into a boulder.

Sakura's back hit the rock with a thunderous crack—like lightning—shattering it. She landed on the ground on top of the rubble, cursing furiously.

"Calm the fuck down," she snapped.

 _A bit ironic, isn't that,_ the Voice whispered, sounding riveted by ongoing events. If Sakura had had the time, she might have rolled her eyes.

She dropped down a millisecond later. A ball of fire scalded the air above her.

"Seriously?" she hissed, heart rate pulsing at the look of unholy rage in the other's eyes.

She sidestepped his kunai and slipped into space between his arms. She reached up to grab wet, white-silver hair, fingers knotting in the long locks with one hand. With the other, she punched him in the face.

She didn't use her full strength, obviously. But she put enough force that it _had_ to hurt.

His mask was in tatters around his neck. She noticed only when she saw his teeth. Because Kakashi was baring his teeth at her, like he wanted very much to tear out her throat.

Only, then, inexplicably, _incomprehensibly_ —

His mouth was on hers.

* * *

It burned. Burned like a brand, like fire on metal.

(It didn't actually seem…amorous.)

Kakashi's lips were hot—hot like burning.

And he kissed her like he was trying to use her mouth to breathe. As though he couldn't figure out how to breathe himself.

That was the only reason Sakura didn't shove him away.

He was holding her, she noticed, calloused hands cutting off the circulation in her upper arms just like they had in Kino's genjutsu. Still, Sakura didn't pull away.

His lips moved savagely against hers, ragged breath fueled greedily by hers, and she didn't pull away.

Only when his hands moved mechanically down to her waist, maneuvering to slip under her flak jacket—soullessly, _mechanically_ —did she react.

She grabbed his wrists with deadly strength. When mismatched eyes blazed down at her, she looked up at him neutrally. His whole face was exposed to her now, unmasked. His hair hung low, brushing high cheekbones, wetted by the rain. Kakashi's pupils were dilated, focusing down on her in rapt attention.

He looked feral. Wild.

Without warning—as though watching to see if she would flinch, as if this were a game of _chicken_ —his head snapped down and his nose rested at her throat.

He inhaled sharply, hands flexing at the top of her arms. Sakura was paralyzed by a curious mixture of shock and horror.

He stayed like that for at least a minute. It felt like hours. When he left—as brutally and silently as his mouth had landed on hers—she did not follow.

* * *

 **Author's Note (yep, a long one this time):**

Ok, so I do definitely feel obligated to address some things I've kind of glossed over until now; keep in mind that, in some regards, I am liberally abusing my creative license lol.

1) Sakura's ANBU henge

According to the story so far, no one other than Sakura and the crow, Shisui, knows the truth about her identity; additionally, (and please educate me on the sharingan, I am certainly not claiming to be an expert), I believe there is enough leeway for me to propose that Kakashi can detect the existence of the henge, but he doesn't necessarily automatically see through it to what is beneath. As for why he might not make efforts to see through the henge: I am also going to assert that it's fairly common for people in ANBU to use jutsus to disguise more obvious / identifiable bodily features / hair colors / etc. as measures for protecting their true identity.

2) Ages / Power Dynamic

I do want to say first that teacher/student romantic fics make me pretty uncomfortable, and I find them generally problematic if not handled in a way that ultimately negates the very imbalanced power dynamic usually inherent in such a relationship. The only reason I am okay with an eventual Kakashi / Sakura development here is because I genuinely intend to show that Kakashi has never performed (nor understood himself to be in) the role of the teacher and that Sakura has never truly felt she was Kakashi's student either. (Honestly, I find the idea of a character falling in love with someone he/she/they once considered genuinely to be a student to be kind of creepy, even in fics where both characters are much older). I know the 'fiction is fiction' defense exists, but I wanted to offer something a little more in case you have concerns similar to mine when reading about this pairing. I just find it hard to buy into the 'romance' when Sakura earnestly calls Kakashi 'sensei'-if you feel the same, I want to assure you that is not the case here. In my mind, I'm pairing Kakashi with someone he knew _very_ distantly when she was thirteen, but only gets to truly know when she is older. Age-gaps exist in healthy, consensual relationships all the time. Essentially, I want to make it clear here that both characters are on a level-playing field by the time they engage in anything resembling a romantic relationship (and that there isn't and hasn't historically been a perception of power imbalance between them). Naturally, you could probably take issue with the fact Kakashi is Sakura's ANBU captain. Maybe. Eh. As of now, it really doesn't bother me-I think the role of a teacher is very different from that of an ANBU captain (and I think Naruto canon also lends itself to the same understanding).

Now to the point I've primarily titled these paragraphs with: ages. I am going to fudge the dates a little here to narrow the age-gap, because this too makes me more comfortable with this relationship. (As I said: creative license). I imagine that Sakura is actually around a year older than Sasuke and Naruto-currently seventeen. Kakashi, currently, is twenty three, nearing twenty four. To give some context, I think this means he was about eight when the kyuubi attacked. We're going to run with it. So: let's say he graduated from the Academy at five (when it was actually six). He became a jounin at seven (actually ten) and joined ANBU shortly after (i.e. he spent a year in ANBU before the kyuubi attacked). In my story, Sakura is definitely above the age of consent. I've based Konoha's laws on Japan's existing laws; I am relying on the de facto local "corruption of minors" laws and "obscenity statutes," which essentially make the age of consent 16-18 . In real life, I would still be wigged out by a relationship between a seventeen year old and a twenty four year old (not the seven year age gap, just the point in time in which that relationship is occurring, like _barely_ legal). But now I am going to conveniently use the 'fiction' defense and not really think about that...

I mean, honestly, if you're still reading this story, you probably don't have a huge problem with how I have been constructing Kakashi and Sakura and their prospective relationship (beyond the fact that Kakashi is clearly an asshole with problems he needs to work through) (but also if you do, please don't read more beyond this, because I don't think I can shrink the age gap more and I'm forcing myself to make do with this). It is important to me, with how I imagine this particular story and what I want it to be, to try to reconcile what I would accept in reality with what I may be 'romanticizing' in fiction. I am trying my best. So, yeah, anyway-this is my spiel. Apologies for any typos, I wrote this in a rush!

3) Omakes?

Did you like the Naruto/Hinata one? Should I add more? Any requests? Let me know :)

 **As always, please leave behind a comment! Your feedback on the previous chapter really blew me away!**


	11. Chapter 11: Holiday Season Special

**Note:** Update 4 of 4 on Jan. 7 (the previous 3 chapters are actual new chapters of the story)

* * *

 **Holiday Season Special!**

 _~omake one~_

Sai was perfectly content as he sat by himself at the bar. Swirling the dark liquid in his cup for a moment, he tilted his head back and downed it in one smooth motion.

The world was loud around him—louder than he was accustomed to. Drunken laughter and banter met his ears wherever he turned. Belatedly, he wondered if 'bar-hopping' was an activity meant to be conducted with others. The book he had read had not explicitly indicated it to be so; yet, he could hardly ignore the evidence before him. The booths lining the sides of the bar were filled with groups of both shinobi and civilians who had clearly arrived together.

Perhaps…he should have invited his teammates? 'Bar-hopping' seemed to be a form of bonding. And they were, in truth, still curiously alien to him: strange creatures that scarcely seemed human, at least, in the way that Sai was. But then, Sai had yet to meet many people who were human like he was.

He was beginning to wonder, in fact, if he was the deviance rather than the norm.

Naruto—was he what the average human embodied? Loud and impulsive; by the textbook, an obvious victim of small penis syndrome. Was Sai, too, meant to live life compensating for something?

Tapping his fingers idly, he considered his other teammate. Haruno Sakura was just as puzzling as Naruto. Possibly more so. She was reserved most of the time, but possibly had anger issues as well. He remembered that she had slammed him into a tree. That had been unexpected. Unprecedented, as well, given what he had read about her from mission files and ROOT intel.

Haruno Sakura was hiding something, Sai guessed. But as long as it did not interfere with his mission, he did not know why he should particularly care.

He frowned, examining an oddity within himself, that he was curious despite the fact he had no reason to be.

That was strange. And yet, his art—not originally his, but delivered by his hands—decorated her back. It did seem concerning that his art, usually entirely subject to his control, might operate with motives mysterious to him. Sakura, of course, was not herself art; but the art existed _on_ her, she merely its canvas. A walking, talking canvas—he wondered who had ever decided tattoos should exist.

An immobile, silent canvas, after all, could only be inherently superior in the endeavor of creating a flawless composition of ink strokes. It seemed counterintuitive that a canvas should distract from that composition.

But he digressed now. The point stood that he was inexplicably invested in the thoughts and motives of not only Sakura but Naruto too, when he had no reason to be.

A trill of sharp, bell-like laughter pierced the air near him, interrupting his thoughts.

Sai cocked his head to the side and examined the source of the noise. It belonged to a blonde girl his own age. She had soft, delicate features of the sort popularly classified as 'attractive,' though Sai personally did not see their appeal. Long, healthy hair as well—she flipped it now over her shoulder as she talked to the boy sitting across from her. She was sitting next to another boy her age with short brown hair, but her attention did not seem to focus much on him, other than a glance every now and then.

Those glances were platonic, Sai decided after moment. But not the ones directed to the boy across from her. Her face blushed an interesting hue of pale pink every time she addressed him. Her laughter seemed to become only more trill-like as the conversation continued. Her pupils grew more dilated with time, her limbs curving suggestively as she imbibed more alcohol as well.

She was exhibiting the common courting practices of individuals his age, Sai reflected. He found this incredibly interesting. He knew he would find other examples if he continued to examine around the room. Yet, he settled with observing this one. He would prioritize proximity and depth of observation over diverse sampling just now.

Curious, his gaze moved left to the object of her amorous attention. The boy across from her, also Sai's age, nursed a tall glass of what he knew to be bitter-sweet alcohol.

It was hard to tell from where Sai was sitting, but the boy did not seem to possess much musculature. Nor, he found with slight puzzlement, did he have many of the features commonly deemed 'handsome.' Intrigued, he wondered what drew the clearly socially desirable female to this particular male.

Tapping his fingers still, it took him a moment to realize his examination had been noticed. The boy's eyebrow twitched in a small, miniscule moment. Then dark, cat-like eyes slid lazily to their right—sliding straight past the blonde girl, past the girl whose hands were inching their way down her partner's pants against the wall, without pause, to Sai.

The girl continued to chatter. If the boy next to her noticed his friend's sudden inattention, he did not show it.

The eyes that met his were razor-sharp, despite the amount of alcohol consumed in the glass before them. A slight chill swept over his body. Sai tilted his head to the side, captivated by his body's reaction. He felt the urge to look away. That was odd. Was this embarrassment?

To luxuriate in the novelty of this feeling, Sai continued to return the stare. The eyes boring into his were unnervingly penetrating.

Deciding that a period of contemplation and reviewal was now due, Sai turned in his seat without hesitation to face his empty cup and the bartender again.

"Another drink?" the smirking woman asked.

Sai paused to consider the question, then nodded. He liked the sweet taste of the sake offered here.

She reached down to pull out the bottle. As she poured, the end of the bottle brushed her prominent breasts. His gaze flicked to them for a moment, then back to the cup.

She caught the movement. "Not interested?" she asked, pointing at her chest.

Sai's gaze darted up briefly, unbothered by the question. "Not particularly."

She huffed a laugh. Sai idly wondered if it were fake or genuine—he was unable to tell the difference as of yet. Her gaze moved to somewhere above him.

Grunt-like sounds began to emerge from his left.

He twisted slightly to look over. It seemed the girl against the wall had successfully made her way into her partner's pants at last. Her arm moving in a telling up and down motion. The man's expression was contorted in a tense display of ecstasy as he panted against the peeling wall.

Most averted their eyes from the sight in exaggerated horror, Sai observed. In truth, however, their body language betrayed them. The shifting of thighs, rubbing covertly together; the slight hitch in their breaths, unnecessary pauses in their story-telling.

Sai was no stranger to this conduct, though it usually arose within him independent of an individual, occurring instead as the periodic if not rare result of his body's natural call for sexual activity. He tended to address it in the usual hand to groin manner. (This was not to say Sai had never had sex with another person. Some ROOT missions in the recent past had made him a well-experienced participant in a variety of sexual acts.)

Despite the contradictory evidence in front him, Sai himself didn't particularly see the appeal of sex with another person. He was entirely sure he had never worn such a ravished expression as the man before him. One's body was known best, addressed with the most efficacy, only by oneself. This was what Sai had learned in his own experience.

It was oddly frustrating, therefore, that the man against the wall existed in front of Sai in the way he did. He was proving an exception to Sai's rule. The man continued to writhe against the wall, causing clientele to nervously stutter their disapproval, until he reached completion. When he at last spent himself into his partner's hand, he gave a loud, debauched cry before mouthing at her neck in worshipful gratitude.

While most around him continued to pretend to look away, Sai watched without qualms. The girl brushed her partner's hair back with a strong, possessive hand, the other twisting in sly, quick movements, though he must have been oversensitive. He gave more soft, breathy cries, mouth slack with bliss. Sai's gaze narrowed, wondering if the man were a masterful actor, and if so, what his agenda could possibly be.

"Noisy pair," a smooth voice—intricately modulated—commented from behind him.

Sai turned and found a pair of dark, cat-like eyes examining him piercingly from the boy suddenly in the stool beside him.

"You're the new one on Team Seven," the boy said lazily, sipping the last of his drink. He exhaled lowly, the bitter-sweet scent of his breath curling into Sai's nose.

"Sai," he answered with careful blankness. When in doubt, he resorted to this state—a fortress of impenetrability. As manners dictated, he returned: "Your name?"

"Shikamaru."

"And why are you here?" Sai asked without pause.

The boy's—Shikamaru's—lips curved. "To get another drink, of course."

He faced forward and waved a hand nonchalantly, as though the effort even this required was somewhat distasteful to him. The smirking woman from earlier noticed the motion and drew closer.

"If it isn't my favorite," the woman purred, eyelashes fluttering.

Sai watched this with persisting confusion. The reason for this boy's—Shikamaru's—apparently pervasive appeal still escaped him.

"Mirai-san," Shikamaru returned, nodding without making eye contact. He seemed suddenly distracted by a crack in his glass. "The same." He handed the glass forward.

Mirai pouted and took the glass. "You know you can't keep treating all us girls like this, right, Shikamaru? Is the Nara clan going to end with you?"

Shikamaru flashed his teeth in a convincing semblance of a smile. "You're beginning to sound like my mother. You should know that's _hardly_ advancing the right agenda."

That was undoubtedly an insult. Yet, Mirai received it with surprisingly good humor. She rolled her eyes. "Watching the scene over there was like watching a dog get kicked. Put that dear girl out of her misery."

The boy's smile widened, but Sai felt that it has suddenly become…sharp. Was it real? Fake? It annoyed him that he could not tell.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Even more puzzling—Shikamaru was clearly a fellow novice at social interaction. Why was he so sought after? "You may wish to take some lessons in understanding social cues," Sai offered. "If you want, there are some helpful books I can suggest."

Mirai covered her mouth behind the bar. Sai did not know why.

Shikamaru's gaze slid to him leisurely.

"The girl across from you was peacocking," Sai explained patiently. "She was repeatedly displacing her hair and laughing excessively. Her pupils were dilated as well. I don't know how you could have possibly misunderstood. Are you generally obtuse?"

Mirai burst into laughter.

"Pea-cock-ing," Shikamaru said slowly, leaning back in his chair.

The pout returned to the bartender's face. "Maybe this one does have a point. You're being deliberately obtuse, Shikamaru."

The boy's face cat-like eyes flashed. "What a pain."

Mirai's pout grew more pronounced. "What she feels is—"

"Troublesome," Shikamaru cut her off. "She's like an actual serial killer when she's horny. I'm just the latest victim, the closest person with a penis she hasn't tried yet, so she fancies herself infatuated with me."

"Actually," Sai interrupted, "I believe that that is natural, not a demonstration of psychopathic behavior as you seem to be suggesting. I've read that it is quite advantageous to choose a long-term partner that is sexually compatible; this would seem to require some sampling, of course, to make such a determination."

Shikamaru leaned forward. The bitter-sweet smell of the alcohol followed him. "Well," the boy drawled, getting uncomfortably close to Sai's face (even in Sai's perception), "then it makes sense that I don't fuck what I'm uninterested in permanently tying myself to, right?"

"Ah!" Mirai cried triumphantly, slamming down the cup for the customer beside them with this statement. The customer jumped in his seat, looking alarmed. She pointed an accusing finger at Shikamaru. "You know what I think? I think you're _scared_ of women."

The boy had propped his elbow against the counter and leaned his face into his hand; after a delayed moment, he shifted his gaze from Sai to the bartender "If you're asking whether it is the utmost priority of my life to avoid entanglements with them," Shikamaru said coolly, "then—yes."

" _Why_?" Mirai demanded.

"In my experience, women are overly emotional," Shikamaru answered immediately, tone unbothered. "They are prone to bouts of irrationality I cannot comprehend. To try to understand them is a futile endeavor—it would mean engaging in a path wrought with inconvenience and conflict."

The bartender looked at him silence for a moment, lips pursed.

Then she placed Shikamaru's filled glass in front of him stiffly. "People may call you terrifyingly smart, Nara-san. You probably have all the best scrolls in the world in those clan grounds of yours—generations of money and knowledge passed down as well. I certainly didn't have that upbringing, you can be sure of that."

Shikamaru inclined his head.

"So you really do have no excuse for your instances of stupidity," she finished, flipping her hair with a sniff. She turned to Sai now. "And you?"

"What about me?" Sai responded with a smile.

"Well, while we're at it, cutie," she said, flashing a pretty grin again. It looked vaguely dangerous. "Do _you_ have anything to add to the matter?"

Sai blinked. Words-wise, that had been a question. But it had been delivered in the tone of a threat. How…puzzling.

"Are you asking for my commentary on his thoughts?" he clarified.

"Sure," Mirai returned. "And if I like the answer, you get to walk without paying."

That seemed fairly promising. All he had to do was give the right answer. Sadly, Sai genuinely did not know what the 'right answer' meant to Mirai. He only had his own thoughts to rely on.

"Well," he began slowly, smiling all the way through, "I disagree with this Shikamaru-san on almost all counts."

For the second time that night, Shikamaru's cat-like eyes snapped to his with incredible speed. The black of his irises, Sai noticed distantly, were indiscernible from those of his pupils.

"Promising start," he thought he heard the bartender say under her breath.

"Oh?" Shikamaru prompted, face unreadable.

"Yes," Sai said, smiling still. "In my experience, I have observed very emotional persons possessing penises. My teammate, Naruto, for example. Initially, I too believed his emotions led him to act irrationally; now, however, I understand that there is compelling reasoning to his strongest emotional outbursts. In summary: I do not believe emotions correlate with irrationality. Additionally, my female teammate, Sakura, is generally very quiet during training and missions—this also is contrary to your statements."

He watched as Shikamaru's eyebrow arched at this last statement.

"I should also say that I disagree vehemently with your methodology," Sai continued evenly. "You've decided, from what seems to be obvious, incomplete sampling and observation, that females are 'inherently' incomprehensible to you. I have clearly done more diverse sampling and careful observation—I have found that most if not all individuals, regardless of gender, are completely incomprehensible to me without concerted effort to understand them. I have resolved myself, therefore, to trying to understand them. With this resolve, I have in fact made progress and learned a considerable amount. I would suggest you attempt to do the same."

The bartender was staring at him, lips slightly open.

Sai turned to smile at her. "Respectfully, Mirai-san, I must disagree with you on one point, even if I must pay for my alcohol as a result. I do not think Shikamaru-san is as smart as you suggest. The gaps in his logic do not seem to be instances of rare oversight, but rather, founded from structural issues with his way of processing information—"

"Ah," Shikamaru cut in lowly, taking a sip from his glass. His gaze was oddly bright. "Have I been found out?"

Despite the lengthiness and breadth of Sai's answer, Mirai looked confused. "It _is_ too _…_ simplistic, too clearly…wrong. It makes no…"—suddenly, her eyes widened—"Wait a second."

Sai was not following her thought process, so he returned to his drink.

"You don't actually believe any of it, do you?" Mirai guessed, sounding exasperated.

Sai stilled now, the rim of the cup an inch away from his lips. Was she suggesting that they had not been having a debate in good faith?

"And it was working so well," Shikamaru said boredly. "What a pain." It seemed to be a phrase he used often.

"It did," the bartender agreed, sounding impressed despite herself. "I went _completely_ dry down there."

"Is that medically possible?" Sai inquired politely, trying to move past his annoyance. It couldn't serve him now, after all. But— _why_ did people never say what they meant?

Mirai didn't answer, turning her attention back to Shikamaru. Suspicion made her mouth purse again. "You know, I did hear once that you refused to fight a girl to the end in your chunin competition."

"If I've ever refused to hit a girl," the boy drawled, "it was for the same reason I have ever refused to hit anyone else. First, it probably required too much effort. Second, I was probably likely to receive uncomfortable injuries in that effort. My mind has always been the tool that is going win real battles; not my body. Accordingly, I don't see the point in putting my limbs through that kind of trial by fire."

"You pretend to be a sexist to ward off unwanted romantic advances," Sai concluded blankly. So, he had wasted his breath after all. How…inefficient.

Shikamaru nodded. After a moment, he added wryly, "And sometimes, to goad female opponents."

"Fine," Mirai said, resting her hands on her ample hips. "But tell me this—what's wrong with Ino-chan? She's a sweet girl. And she's your age."

"She is also beautiful," Sai added distractedly, still frowning.

Shikamaru's eyes seemed to bore into him especially penetratingly now. "You think so?"

"Yes."

He seemed oddly intent. "For what reasons?"

"That is," Sai began reluctantly (was this a false debate too?), "she has features that are commonly praised in the texts I have read." Then, he listed: "Small nose, full lips, unblemished skin, long, richly colored hair…"

Shikamaru took a careful sip from his glass. When he spoke again, his lips brushed the glass. "Perhaps,"—he rested his cheek leisurely into the palm of his hand again—"the question I meant to ask is: do _you_ find her to be beautiful?"

Sai paused, brows furrowing. "I do not know what it means to find someone beautiful."

He had never considered that, before. Maybe…

Maybe, this had something to do with what was wrong with him—with what made him different. And naturally, having just witnessed a sexual act he himself could not reproduce with comparable pleasure, Sai's mind went there first.

Was Sai unable to enjoy sex with other people because he had not until now found them…beautiful? What did it mean to _find_ someone beautiful? Was that the same thing for every person? Was it the same for _Sai_ as it was for other people?

Some of his confusion must have shown on his face, because Shikamaru's lips curled.

"For me," the boy said simply, "I find it in a glance."

"I don't…understand what that means."

"If that glance compels me," Shikamaru said lazily, eyes dark like pools of ink, "if it draws me in. If the words that follow are ones so earnest I can't put up a pretense before them. Then—I cannot look away."

Sai's limbs felt oddly heavy where he sat. If he hadn't known better, he would thought he had been drugged.

"Compels you," he latched onto with difficulty. "I must examine, then, what compels me?"

Shikamaru hummed. His eyelashes, Sai thought to himself, looked like strokes of ink as well.

"I like to paint," Sai said. "I like only to paint certain things—those that compel me. So is what I want to paint what I find beautiful?"

"What would you like to paint?" Shikamaru asked.

The alcohol must have gotten to him, he theorized. What was this odd feeling? A sort of reluctance… Shame? No. Embarrassment? But Sai had never felt embarrassed before.

"Beasts, birds, rivers, mountains—" _his brother_ –"and…"

"And?"

"Your eyes," his mouth said quite directly. "I think I would like to paint your eyes."

Shikamaru was silent for a moment. Then, he let out a breath of air and looked up at the ceiling. "Do you look at everyone like that?"

"Like what?"

A second later, there was a hand—firm, unabashed—lifting his chin up. "I can't find a word for it," Shikamaru said, smiling to himself as though amused by a private joke. "Irreverent?"

"Ah," Sai said, wondering if he had angered the other boy. Smiles could be lies, after all. "If I have upset you—"

Shikamaru closed the distance between them. Sai watched his progress without comprehension.

It would have been an exaggeration to say their lips met; when the distance became the breath between molecules, the contact was unfailingly soft. Despite the strong grip of the hand that had curved to the side of his face, the kiss was terribly gentle, the gentlest he'd ever been given—it was almost unbearable, like being presented with a sweet, but being only allowed to just glance it with your tongue.

And yet—even in that brief, ephemeral brush of lips—the slightest taste of bitter-sweetness was imprinted, like the slightest trace of paint from a brush onto a canvas.

Sai drew back, blinking slowly. His tongue flicked out, unthinkingly, to follow the curve of his own lip. Shikamaru traced the motion with a dark gaze.

"Does that answer your question, Mirai-san?" the boy asked uncaringly.

Without waiting for an answer, he drew closer again. Sai watched him with calmly this time. When the other boy took too long, he tilted his head up in silent demand. For the sake of observation, of course, he was obligated to put himself through this again.

(So what if he wondered, suddenly: if _this_ boy held him, would he achieve what the man against the wall had?)

"Yes," the woman said very belatedly, sounding dazed. "That, ah, explains quite a bit."

Neither ended up paying for their drinks.

* * *

 _~omake two~_

Ino had spent most of her life loathing Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Force.

As a child, T&I had taken stolen her father at odd hours of the night, only to return him looking troubled and wan days later. Although neither she nor her mom ever brought it up, the following nights had been ones of restless sleep for all of them, perturbed by her father's shouts as he relived the things he had seen.

(The things he had done).

This was not to say her mother was without her own demons. All in all, in fact, both her parents looked much happier when they were at the clan flower shop.

From a young age, Ino had thus learned where the recipe for happiness could be found for a Yamanaka. It was undoubtedly the flower shop. It was where both of her parents would retire, contentedly tending to variations of flora for the rest of their days. Almost all Yamanakas did.

Being allergic to flowers was, indeed, an unheard of condition among members of her clan.

Ino hadn't realized she was until she was ten.

She had finally been given permission to work in the shop, but the longer hours had only revealed what she had missed during shorter visits. After her first shift, red, blotchy hives had sprouted all along her skin beneath her clothes. Ino had been angry and ashamed; she had hidden the traitor marks from her parents and friends. She hid them still, now, and continued to work in small shifts at the shop. Some jutsus were handy in covering up the symptoms.

But the dream of the flower shop had been stricken down, nevertheless. Cruelly so.

Perhaps, still, she considered now, if certain events had not occurred as they had—perhaps it was possible that she still could have avoided T&I.

The facts were: on paper, Ino had been the top 'kunoichi' in her year. But that hadn't really meant much; she had never tested at the same level as the top of her class. Like Shikamaru, she had been distracted by other things while at the academy (though not the same things): boys, dresses, crushes. Anything other than learning the skills that she _knew_ would send her straight to T&I.

By all accounts, no one could have thought Ino would have ended up here—even her own father had believed she wouldn't make it, had seemed happier for it. She didn't have the grades, the track record, or the necessary recommendations.

Promotion of 'elite chunin' into the department should have passed over her. It _had_ in the regular recruiting cycle.

Of course, then Ino had gone and fucked everything up.

It had been a late night out—the alcohol had been sweet but heady. She had been walking back humming to herself, when she had seen the man beating his son right there in the open, unafraid of censure, confident in his own perverted power.

The boy couldn't have been more than seven, too. He hadn't even begged for it to stop, only kept grasping at his father's pant leg, as though yearning for the one morsel of painless contact to ground himself. To survive the barrage.

Ino had entered the man's mind and broken him.

Unfortunately, Morino Ibiki (the man she knows now she had always hated, though she hadn't known it was _him_ before, calling her father out every night) had seen it all.

Morino, the sick fuck, had calmly told her that he'd seen her break the law (apparently, what she _should_ have done was call a military police force officer?). There had also been the _slightly_ underage drinking. So, he posed, she could either get written up and risk jail-time—or he could negotiate a deal if she agreed to use her talents in a well-regulated setting.

And thus: just as her father had begun retreating from T&I, allowing a new generation to take his place, Ino had been handed the ugly, grey uniform after all.

Months had passed since. She still didn't know how to tell him; he came into their headquarters so rarely, it had been laughably easy avoiding him. Ino didn't _want_ him to see her here, not when he had been so happy thinking she had escaped.

Also: it was a _god_ ugly uniform. The fewer people who saw her in it, the better.

Really, Ino was confident she could pull off almost anything, but the baggy, grey button down jacket paired with loose grey pants did nothing for her. Worse, she wasn't allowed to wear earrings or any jewelry—apparently, those were too great a danger near high-risk prisoners determined to escape.

Ino felt _suffocated_ here—unsexed, caged, leashed. If she dressed more flamboyantly these days than was practical on missions, it was because she felt it to be well-deserved compensation.

Ino knew she was pretty, and she _liked_ flaunting it. She liked boys a lot, too (always had), and she liked when they looked at her like they hadn't seen anything so beautiful before. There was something especially exciting when daimyos' sons and courtiers knelt before _her_. For all the magnificent, unparalleled artwork around them, it was Ino they viewed as the exotic flower.

Yes, Ino liked being the most beautiful thing in the room. Which was why today had taken a turn for the worse the precise moment Hyuuga Neji had walked into their headquarters.

It was possibly a little known fact that Ino hated Neji. To be fair, there were very few circumstances where her animosity could come up. He was a jounin and she was still a chunin. They rarely encountered each other.

Just three years ago, Neji had merely been an uptight, cargo-shorts wearing prude. Sasuke had been the threat if at all, though his features were usually too contorted in annoyance for _that_ to amount to much. He had been uptight as well, but the sexy kind of uptight; the kind that threatened to just say 'fuck it' and one day make him a rogue-nin. (Of course, it became very un-sexy when Sasuke went and did just that. And also when she had lost Sakura over him. They didn't talk much these days. Ino regretted that more than she did losing Sasuke.)

But Neji _had_ to be a surprise, didn't he? In three years the older boy had gone on to make happy with Hinata, take a mild chill pill, and in thus doing, manage to fuck up everything for Ino.

Because in the last three years, Hyuuga Neji had (there was no other word for it) _blossomed._

Ino surveyed him now as they waited for Morino to let them into the interrogation room. She still couldn't bring herself to deny it.

He was the stark opposite to her, skin pale where Ino was bronzed. His hair was a heavy curtain of midnight black-blue, unlike her blonde locks, though equally long. Where she was soft, gentle curves, he was prolonged, sloping lines and angles, an intricate composition of lean muscle and profound delicacy. If they stood side to side, she had no idea who would come out on top. She had no wish to find out.

To make matters worse, he looked otherworldly in his cream, kimono with billowing sleeves. His fashion sense, unfortunately, had also apparently improved with time.

She scowled to herself, wishing she could burn the grey clothes off her body right now.

The older boy's glance rested on her expression with indifference. "Yamanaka. I had no idea you worked here."

"Please, call me Ino," she responded dully. "It's a bit new. Just something I'm trying out."

"And how did you find yourself here?" Neji asked with distant politeness.

Thankfully, the door in front of them opened. She had been about to barf.

"Great," Morino grunted. "Glad you could make it here on such short notice, Hyuuga Neji."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Morino-san. I always make time for matters that concern my clan. I am honored to represent them today in this capacity," Neji said, bowing. His hair looked silken as it slipped over his shoulder. Ino glared at it. What did he use? Freshly laid eggs? Milk? Honey from the heavens?

"Ino," she heard belatedly. Morino was snapping his hand in front of her face.

She sniffed. "What, old man?"

He looked frustratingly unbothered, though Neji's eyes narrowed disapprovingly. Still a prude.

"I've gotten all I can out of him. We need you to go one year back," the man instructed. "The seventh day of the seventh month of that year."

"Piece of cake," Ino muttered.

The worst thing was it _was._ She was unprecedentedly good at this (Morino's words, not her own).

She stalked into the room. The man was chained to a steel chair in the middle. He had clearly been roughed up, purple bruises and open wounds spotting every inch of skin that was visible.

He coughed, spitting up some blood onto the floor. "Ah," he began to leer, "aren't you a sight for sore eyes."

Ino giggled. "That's so sweet of you to say."

She could feel Neji's gaze on her, disapproving.

Without a further word, Morino shut the door behind them, leaving her in charge. He knew she got results; he would review the video tape later if he needed.

This left her in the middle of the room with Neji at its corner. She didn't exactly know why Neji was here, but apparently, somewhere, this man had made a powerful enemy in the Hyuuga.

"God, those tits," he grunted, shifting to lean closer. "Wish I could see them. Must be things of beauty."

Ino's smile twitched slightly. She _hated_ that word—'tit.'

"They don't fit very well in the uniform," she pouted, leaning forward so that her hair just brushed the ends of his fingers. "The buttons are kind of…tight."

The man gave a small, nasty grin. He knew she wasn't the lascivious, airhead she was pretending to be; she knew he wasn't as enslaved to his cock as _he_ was pretending to be. They were playing a game, and both knew it.

The difference was that he thought he could play it better. But he was wrong. Ino knew _exactly_ how to do this.

The enemy-nin's gaze caught onto Neji exactly as she had guessed it would. "And who's that?" he grinned, revealing bloody teeth. "Boy or a girl? Fucking pretty too, huh."

"Boy," Ino said easily, sitting primly on the steel table she was supposed to interrogate him from. She smiled back at him. "Doesn't really matter to you, does it?"

"No," the man returned with a jeer. "It doesn't."

The older boy was beginning to look slightly pinched.

Ino rolled her eyes, then began to fold her sleeves up slightly. The motion brought the man's insincere attention back to her. "Going to hit me, darling?"

"Nope," she said with a smile. "That isn't really my style."

"Oh?" he indulged with a mocking smile. "What is your style, then?"

"Gentle persuasion. Also, it's Ino."

"Hiro," the man said with a flippant smirk. His gaze went calculatingly to the corner again. "His?"

Ino tilted her neck back, letting the light from the fluorescent lamp hanging above caress the column of her throat. She looked at Neji, letting her voice become throaty. "Neji. Speaking of which, why don't you step forward? We're feeling a bit lonely here."

Two spots of red appeared on Neji's face. Ino knew they were from fury. In the harsh light of the interrogation room, it only served to heighten his beauty, the stark pale against the pink-vermillion.

"My, my," the man returned flawlessly; his voice was a convincing rasp. "You are a pretty thing aren't you, Neji. I'd probably kill my own mother to get those lips around my cock."

"Hm," Ino hummed, drawing slightly closer to the prisoner. "I wonder if his cheeks would go red like that then, too."

"Yamanaka," Neji said tightly. "Stop."

The man's grin widened. Ino smirked behind the 'offended' hand at her mouth.

"Not used to this kind of thing, are you?" the man said lightly. His eyes were still calculating. Ino watched him with razor focus, though she pretended to play with her hair.

"He isn't," she agreed. "But he _is_ very tempting, nevertheless. Or maybe because of it?"

"Because of it," the man agreed with a dark, knowing smile.

Ah, he still thought he was ahead of Ino.

"What would you do to him, if you could?" she asked innocently, biting her lower lip.

He raised an eyebrow at her, looking lazy for a moment before he switched seamlessly back into his lecherous persona. "Where to start. He's got a tight ass with slim hips like that. It'd be a true shame to loosen him."

"You think?" Ino pondered. She slipped off the chair and walked toward Neji. He watched her approach with a tight frown.

"What would you do, Ino-chan?" the prisoner asked with fake interest.

"Me?" she echoed. With quick fingers, she reached up and broke the tie holding Neji's hair together. His hair cascaded around him, thick, dark, and silken.

He gave an outraged hiss, but he was cornered by her body against the wall.

With a lone finger, she penetrated the space between two locks of hair, and then brushed just upward. The upper lock twisted sinuously through her fingers.

She turned to look at the prisoner. The man's cool gaze flickered between the shocked anger on Neji's face and the seductive twine of his hair around her fingers.

"I think you _should_ loosen him, shinobi-san," Ino said quietly. "I think his mouth would slip open, making another pretty, pink hole, just like that. I think he would struggle to keep his moans inside, but he wouldn't be able to, with his mouth helplessly _gaping_ like that."

The man didn't respond. He watched silently from the chair.

" _Yamanaka,_ " Neji snarled under his breath. "I don't care if I start a clan war, you are dead—"

She slipped her two fingers into his open mouth. He stopped abruptly, eyes flaring in incredulous rage. He looked almost too disbelieving of her gall to even move.

"I think you would wet your fingers just like this, and he would glare at you, furious, as he does now," Ino whispered. She used her other hand to grab Neji's hair and _yank_ , just harshly enough. "And then you would pull his hair just like this, and he would _keen_ for you—"

Neji's palms were glowing when they hit her hard in her midsection, with such devastating force, that she skidded all the way across the room until she collided with the table at its center. The steel table was nailed to the ground and, still, the nails protested under the duress forced on them, making a high-pitched screeching noise.

Ino let herself lean against the table's surface, elbows level with its surface and face contorted slightly with pain. Her hair had become unkempt too, she knew, slipping in tendrils from her own hair tie.

"I think he would play rough with you, shinobi-san," Ino moaned. She pushed against the surface and slid behind the prisoner, dropping her head to relay her words just by his ear.

"Look at him," she instructed in a murmur. "Isn't he the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? Those coveted, Hyuuga eyes glaring up at you as you would fill his mouth. As pale as he is, but his cheeks flushed with so much _vitriol_ —"

And there, for the first time—for just an instant—instinctive, visceral lust flickered through the prisoner's eyes.

Ino sneered openly now. "Got you."

She made the hand signs and, in the brief instant of weakness birthed by his authentic lust, it was child's play to break into his mind and take over.

In seconds, she had what she needed.

Hiro was mindless with anger in his chair, pulling furiously against his chains. Pain pulled at his features, because Ino had not been gentle.

"You fucking bitch," he spat, saliva dripping from his mouth. "You fucking _cunt_ —"

Ino glared. She hated that word too.

"After you, Neji-san," Ino said lightly, holding open the door. He didn't move as quickly as she would have liked, and so she went through anyway and let go of the door.

An instant later, she heard the door shut behind her. Another, and there was a body blocking her path.

"What just happened in there?" Neji asked, features cold.

Ino looked at him. "Lust tends to make minds vulnerable," she explained monotonously, "especially for shinobi like him, who train to reject every other emotion but choose to indulge in sex; when they feel sexual hunger—one of the few emotions they allow—it feels all the more potent to them, leaves them all the more crippled, because their minds are otherwise so undisciplined in operating with emotion."

"That may be the case," Neji returned cuttingly, "but that does not explain why you chose to exploit me in that manner. You very well know that was not my intended purpose in the room, whatever your ulterior motives."

"I have no idea why you were in the room with me. To ensure T&I was doing its best with your sworn enemy? I don't care," Ino snapped back. "But I did _my_ job in there. We have many, many prisoners here, Hyuga-san, and my duty is to break them as quickly as I can. You were there. I used you. I played the heavy-handed femme fatale; he knew to guard himself against me. But in my heavy-handedness, I also made you seem all the more appealing, all the more credible; it made him vulnerable to you, because all your reactions _were_ authentic. You sped up the work _greatly_."

His face was unreadable, now.

She drew back after a moment. "I am sorry," she said bluntly. "That I made you feel uncomfortable with my words. And for sticking my fingers in your mouth. And for…pulling your hair. I would have asked for your permission ahead of time, if that wouldn't have ruined the overall effect. I am willing to…compensate you for that, as long as what you decide it is reasonable. You can also write me up for unethical conduct; I won't stop you."

The older boy looked like a statue, now, for all that Ino could comprehend of his motives and thoughts from his face.

She sighed wearily. "Alright. If it needs to be the face, then it needs to be the face. But let me know, so I can clench my teeth ahead of time."

When he moved toward in her a sudden burst of motion, she locked her teeth together and shut her eyes.

She opened them a second later when she felt hands on her abdomen. Without causing pain. If anything, the area was starting to feel better.

"Are you…" Ino felt very disturbed. " _Healing_ me?"

"My cousin taught me the basics."

"Why?" she asked, eyebrows climbing to the top of her forehead.

"I thought it would be useful."

"No—why are you healing _me_?"

Neji looked at her, unblinking. "Because you thought you were doing your job. I didn't, and I hurt you for it."

"Of course I was—" Ino cut herself off, gaze narrowing. "What do you mean _thought_?"

"You _were_ doing your job," Neji allowed after a moment. "You were also unaware of what…I knew. I didn't realize that."

Ino was lost now. "What the hell are you talking about?"

The older boy looked down at her, silken hair still curtained around his pale, aristocratic features. "As you may know, the byakugan allows its user to see into the intricate mechanisms of the human body."

"Yes, yes," she waved off, "we all learned this in the academy."

"We can sense heartbeats, sense lies," Neji paused for a moment. "We can also learn, with time, to recognize…certain responses."

Ino stilled. Her ears were filled with a rushing noise, like she had been caught out, before she even knew what the ludicrous charge was.

"Oh?" she demanded. "And what did you see?"

"Yamanaka-san," Neji said after another brief pause. "You became wet."

What.

" _What_."

"Between your legs." As if _that_ was the part that needed clarification.

She went deaf for a moment—the sound of the air-conditioning whirring, the rustle of leaves in the breeze outside the window— _nothing_.

"The hell?!" she snarled. God, she was going to slam that pretty boy against the wall. "Do _you_ fucking get off on lies? You think I like non-consensual _bad_ touches? Or are you going to say it's when you shoved me? News flash, that's called acting. I didn't like that any more than I did when—"

"It occurred," the older boy interrupted calmly, "when you touched my hair."

Well, she didn't have a fucking hair fetish either. Ino broke off, calming down abruptly as reason returned to her brain. "Look, you're beautiful. I won't deny it. But actually, I _hate_ you because of it. So there's really no way I'd ever—"

She stopped when a hand, pale and slim, reached up and embedded itself in the roots of her hair. After a brief pause, he moved his hand parallel to the ground, pulling the strands gently with him so that they fanned out before falling again.

"Again," he said calmly.

"No." It had. This time, she had felt it. A hot, molten pulse between her thighs. God, Ino thought, could this day get any _worse_?

"Also, when I touched you to heal your abdomen," he added.

"Fuck you," she responded, equally determinedly.

He looked at her coolly for a long, examining moment. Then: "Possibly. Only after a considerable amount of consideration and some time."

Ino gaped. Where the hell had the prudish, virginal Neji gone? Wasn't _she_ supposed to be the sex fiend? God, she had even considered fucking Shikamaru at one point during a dry spell (speaking of which, she could hardly live it down now). But this—no. This was the line. _There had to be a line_.

She couldn't fuck someone prettier than her. An ego like Ino's wouldn't be able to take that kind of blow. _Never_.

"Never," she vowed, staggering back. She must have looked terrified. Her eyelids hurt from her eyes being so wide.

"Hm," Neji hummed. It wasn't in agreement. If anything, he looked mildly arrogant now, like he had been posed with an intriguing challenge.

Fuck.

T&I was intended to be Ino's personal hell, wasn't it?

She should have just done the easy thing and gone to jail.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

So. Despite the very popular Kakashi/Sakura main pairing, I do have a thing for non-traditional pairings-that's basically where these come from, as a kind of challenge to myself. These were also intended to be generally light-hearted, but ended up being a little *spicy*. Oops. Oh well. All just practice for the main event :D

Let me know what you think! Hopefully this will tide you over until the next chapter :):):)

Also: I didn't know until now that I felt oddly protective of Sai? I just want someone to take care of him lolll. And Ino is SO different from Sakura (also, genuinely, very, very different from me). She was a ton of unexpected fun!


	12. Chapter 12: Rounds

"This is such a waste of time," she heard someone mutter behind her. "Cover for me. I'm going to slip out the back—"

"This is a mandatory training all shinobi must go through to remain a part of the hokage's forces. No need to whisper, you are entirely free to leave. Just make sure you take your hitai-ate off first."

Despite the coolly delivered threat, the room's inhabitants still darted skeptical looks at each other. Sakura commiserated. Really—had no other shinobi-owned space been free other than a _classroom in the Academy_ for this particular 'training'?

Perhaps, Tsunade truly was that sadistic.

Her gaze passed over her fellow members in Team Seven, then Team Eight, Team Ten, and Team Guy. All that was missing from the scenery was Iruka. And, in point of fact, every few seconds Kiba would peek over his shoulder—like he was concerned the teacher might just pop out of the wall work, catch him unawares, and smack him with a folder like he used to on a daily basis.

"Why is Team Guy here?" Naruto pondered moodily. "Didn't they have to do this last year?"

Sai's mouth twitched. "They must have missed the date last year due to a mission, like I did."

Naruto gave an annoyed groan beside them. Unfortunately, the noise was loud enough to catch the attention of their 'instructor.'

"You," the man said, his silky voice grating against Sakura's ears much like a too-sweet dessert. "Since you have so much to say, I'll leave it to you to introduce the topic of today's training."

Kiba was abruptly assailed by a loud coughing fit. Shino patted his back stoically.

Naruto's face scrunched into a look of intense concentration. "…when two people like each other very much after, hm, maybe five chapters? But sometimes less. But on average, definitely, five—"

The instructor didn't bother letting him finish.

"You?"

Sai's head lifted, his face unreadable. "The topic of today's conversation is sex, an issue I have found inexplicably makes many of my peers bashful, though I am sure they regularly engage in said activity. I have also found, in my experience, that definitions are often subjective determinations," He added after a short pause. "I once read that everything in the world is about sex except sex, and that sex itself is ultimately about power. If this is in fact the case, then I suppose today's discussion will translate into a discussion on the nature of power."

"Is that so? Yes, I suppose many wise scholars have indeed found sex and power to be…inextricable," the instructor commented softly, eyes glinting.

It was a dangerous line of thought, Sakura realized too late. Her lips throbbed in hateful remembrance.

Fuck. And she had thought she had managed to wipe it from her mind entirely.

It had been two nights since she had returned home with a drenched uniform cold as ice, the door still swinging shut behind her as she made the hand signs to remove her disguise (sloppy, she knew, but at the moment, she could not bring herself to care).

Two nights, since she had pulled off her uniform and tossed it into the corner of the room. Undid the binding around her chest. Filled the tub in her cramped bathroom to near the top.

Leaned back, letting her head partially submerge in the water, just until her ears.

Forgotten shortly after. Now, her mind suddenly wouldn't let her ignore it any longer—mysteriously prompted again—and turned the puzzle over with almost manic energy.

The Kakashi she had thought she had known and the one in front of her now—both frustrating enigmas. She wanted to dissect. Lay open. Until she had all the pieces in her hands, and she made those pieces _make_ sense.

The theory wasn't implausible, was it? It had long seemed to Sakura that the copy-nin was a force, almost above all else, of arrogance and egotism. Perhaps, his…. _actions_ had in fact been driven by some impulse to overpower her, to resort to _other_ means when fists had failed. She would be remiss, after all, to forget the oiran, and how he had taken her: obligatorily, meaninglessly. Why did the copy-nin touch an oiran in the first place, if not to exert his power over a being obligated to comply—

" _Move_."

Her lips tightened. A soft imperative, which from any other would have been a man begging a boy to save his own life—but not _Kakashi_ , because that simply did not make sense, _did it_? And what place exactly, Sakura reflected coldly, did that admitted oddity have in this?

"For civilians, we may settle this as a matter of opinion," the instructor said nonchalantly—she blinked, having managed to forget where she was—"As shinobi, however, what is true is that you _will_ face sex as your opponent; it _will_ be weaponized against you."

"As you all know," he continued smoothly, "there are shinobi branches that utilize and practice seduction for the purposes of information gathering and assassination. Konoha, as it happens, is one of them—it is the branch I belong to and, perhaps, one that some of you may join in the future."

Based on the discomfited expressions of the particular people in the room, this appeared generally unlikely.

"Sex may also, however, be weaponized against you far more literally—and I use the term 'sex' loosely here," he continued, still remarkably calm. "That is, as a form of violence and a means of denigrating your person—without any pretense or appeal to your consent. I am here to warn you. At worst, to prepare you."

Her gaze shot up as the instructor pivoted and walked slowly through the aisle in the middle of the room. "A common misconception," he continued quietly, "is that women alone are victims of sexual assault. If you believe this, I will have to disillusion you: the kind that engages in such behavior often does not care to discriminate."

Finally, the instructor had every member of the room watching him with rapt, grim fascination.

"Whatever gender you ascribe to, you are not impervious."

He gave a humorless smile. "Now that I finally have your full attention, let us begin."

* * *

Two hours later, Sakura and Naruto sat on either side of Sai at the counter of Ichiraku Ramen. Unlike usual, their group was entirely silent.

His words had been enough, hadn't they? To bludgeon reality over them all—and there had been so much blindness in that room, her own too, conveniently pretending what had almost happened hadn't. Caught unawares, without weapons, thirteen and ill-prepared—civilians, not shinobi, but that mattered little. She hadn't been able to handle the reality of it then, so she'd buried it within her, housed it inside like a hidden shard that only grew sharper with time.

It pierced her again, now, as keenly as kunai blade deep within where she could not soothe the pain.

Lighthearted conversation and laughter drifted around them, but Sakura felt largely distanced from it. Lifting her gaze from her bowl of ramen felt like lifting a tree with the effort it suddenly required, when she finished her meal. She made brief eye contact with Teuchi, who shot her a look of concern before directing his gaze meaningfully to Naruto.

Sakura surveyed her fellow teammate and understood. Naruto had barely even stirred the spoon in his still-full bowl. They sat in silence for some time more, until Naruto himself broke the silence.

"That was…" he began, quietly.

Sakura nodded, unsure what to say in response. The training had been eye-opening for everyone, if in different ways—all sobering.

Her gaze flitted over the restaurant, before following the trail of condensation her glass had made as it was placed in front of her. A minute movement to the left suddenly caught her attention. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at.

Then, her focus zeroed in on the way Sai's too-pale hands gripped the bowl in front of him. And the way they trembled, just ever so slightly.

She looked now slowly upwards from beneath her lashes. Had they been like that the entire time?

The horrible, unspeakable tightness only continued to gather in her chest.

She heard a shattering sound. Oh—that had been her. Her hand, which had been clutching the bowl, had clenched too tightly.

"Who?" Her voice was deathly quiet.

He jerked like he had been electrocuted, eyes widening.

For a long moment, it looked as though he would deny it altogether, plastering yet another plastic smile on his face. But then, consideringly, his glance flickered between her and Naruto.

"A woman," Sai said finally, blankly. He blinked again, looking down at his hands as though he were seeing them for the first time. "It was not like that. I agreed to it. I didn't find it enjoyable, certainly, but then—until fairly recently, I had thought it impossible for my body to even derive pleasure from sex with another person."

Naruto's eyes were slitted, his fingers curled into tight fists. It had been part of a mission, Sakura read between the lines.

"But you're not part of the seduction branch."

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Sai lacked the necessary social skills to have been _that_ type of black ops member.

Sai's coal black eyes drilled into her.

No words had to pass between them.

Whatever line of work Sai had belonged to, it had been dark underbelly of Konoha's operations, under the radar and unregulated. There had been no training, no vetting, _nothing_. And that way saying something, given what Sakura had already found to be the case in ANBU.

As children, they had all been told that the mysterious, masked ANBUs—while enigmatic and frightening to the common citizen of Konoha—were the trusted confidantes of the hokages: eyes, ears, and, indeed, extension of heart. The hokage alone was supposed to know the faces behind the masks, the ANBU as the humans they were: their histories and their personal sacrifices for their village, when no public monument could recognize them.

Sakura knew now, of course, that this wasn't the exact case. She had no clue what went on with the captains—but she knew none of her peers met with the hokage on a personal basis. Pointedly, the organization was simply too big for Tsunade, or any hokage, to micromanage and track every ANBU to that mythologized extent. What Tsunade knew in detail was no doubt determined by a need-to-know basis, given how spread thin she was.

And look what had managed to slip through the cracks. Her teeth bit into her lip, drawing the iron taste of blood to her tongue.

"I know you can't tell us about your…background," Sakura said lowly, turning to face Sai fully.

"We'll figure it out ourselves." Naruto's back was ramrod straight, as stiff as though a string had been drawn up from his tailbone through to the top of his head.

Sai's mouth parted slightly, a small sound escaping. His eyes widened, as though shocked by the involuntary noise.

"And what if…" He paused, face smoothing. "What if what you learn changes what you may think of me."

Sai seemed to be under the misapprehension that whatever his teammates had thought of him so far had been generally positive. She didn't bother correcting him.

His face tensed as Naruto gripped his shoulder with bruising strength.

"I don't care," Naruto said slowly, vehemently. His blue eyes blazed. "What happened in the past doesn't matter. Only what all of us do now."

Sakura blinked. Naruto's gaze slid to her and he stared at her fiercely, daring her to—she didn't know.

She removed her hand from the counter and, after a moment of hesitation, slipped it down to near her side. Curling, she slid her fingers into the cool, smooth ones next to hers. She didn't look away from the bowl in front of her as she did it, face stoic. But she felt the pulse of breath beside her stutter. After a moment, the fingers entwined in hers tightened their hold.

They finished the meal with no more conversation, parting ways silently just as it became twilight.

* * *

The next day, Sakura received summons via the crow.

But of all the things she had expected, the last perhaps was the sea of individuals crowded in the locker rooms when she arrived. Sakura had been prepared to charge directly to her assigned locker to pull on her armor for another unsavory mission. Shortly after entering, she realized that would be patently impossible.

The room was packed beyond the point of maximum capacity, the conversation between its numerous inmates culminating into something deafening. The movement of bodies eventually moved her in an entirely different direction than she had originally intended. Fortunately, it was there that she found Hyena and Snail.

"What's going on?" she demanded, shooting a glare as she was knocked forward once more.

"Rounds," Hyena answered shortly, tying her hair up with a leather band with sharp, economic twists of her wrist.

"Rounds. What are…rounds?"

"Black ops members have to periodically defend their positions in ANBU," Snail explained delicately. "So we have rounds of spars in the training stadium without warning few times a year."

"To determine fitness," Hyena summarized shortly, rolling her shoulders as though already priming her body. "Weed out the weak; reshuffle, if appropriate, those who stay."

"And every ANBU member has to go through this?" Sakura demanded.

"Not every person," Snail allowed. "I suppose the captains have their own system among themselves."

"But for the rest of us, yes," finished Hyena. "So you better get armor on." She handed Sakura what seemed like a spare set from her locker.

Sakura strapped them on blindly. A thought suddenly occurred to her, and her eyes widened. "Wait. So that means I could be moved off of _this_ team?"

Hyena looked at her strangely for her tone. "If you don't perform to standards."

"And what will happen then?"

"You don't need to be concerned, Crow-chan, you'll do fine!" Snail said with a cheerful punch to her shoulder. After a moment, she let her hand swing down. "You definitely won't be kicked out—that only happens to ANBU who are no longer physically capable of the role, and you still have all your body parts."

"My bet? You'll be booted off to a lower team," a new voice added—Bear, Sakura's identified sourly—"Don't know how you got here, Crow, but you're certainly going to face the due trial by fire now."

Sakura shrugged dismissively, eyes narrowed from behind her mask. Get booted off to a lower team? Excellent.

A loud bell rang through the room, cutting through the noise easily.

Snail nudged her. "People are heading out now. Finish strapping up and follow."

Nodding, Sakura finished tying her arm guards and fell into line behind her other teammates. They crossed through the lobby she had entered just ten minutes ago into the other section of the headquarters, which housed a giant stadium (that she had until now wondered at its purpose entirely).

When they entered, Sakura's mouth fell open.

Had she thought the locker rooms had contained all the ANBU? Clearly, most had already entered the stadium. Not all the seats were filled, but there were certainly more ANBU gathered in one place than she had ever seen in her life.

"So how does this work," Sakura muttered, still gaping. "Is there one bout at a time? Who chooses who you fight?"

"It's randomized," Hyena muttered back, leading them to where Raccoon sat. "And there are usually four to five spars at one time."

"Or we'd never fucking get out of here," Bear grunted.

"We each do three bouts in a row, short breaks in between of course," Snail explained cheerily. She pointed downwards where a long line of ANBU sat separate from the normal stadium seat, looking directly onto the fighting grounds. "After, the captains vote on whether or not we stay. If yes, then they decide where we go until the next rounds."

Hyena settled down into her seat with a short sigh of relief, rubbing her recently sprained ankle. She saw Sakura watching and added briefly, "Any of the captains can make a bid on you if they think you're more suitable for their team. Your current team captain can argue to keep you or let you go. They argue their cases before the group, but ultimately, all the captains vote, and majority decides."

"Ah," Sakura said, leaning back.

One of the figures among the captains stood up, and the stadium fell into silence.

"Some of you have been here for years; for others, this is your first time going through rounds. No matter the outcome, know that in carrying the will of fire, your past year of service has been—"

"Always wondered why _he_ 's commander," Bear said, bumping shoulders with Raccoon for all the world like he was at the movie theaters, talking just quietly enough so as not to get shushed. "You know?"

"Everyone knows you don't put your best soldier anywhere other than at the center of the battlefield," Raccoon offered without pause, as though he'd answered this question many times. After a short pause, he added. "Plus, the taichou is…young. He might have more experience than most of us, but—"

"He hasn't been alive long enough to match the commander's years," Hyena finished, nodding in agreement.

Sakura's scowled, _so_ grateful for yet another reminder of how 'prodigious' their precious taichou was. She tapped her fingers lightly against her knees. "So…how many rounds have you been through?"

All four turned to look at her in one, eerily synchronized motion.

"Five under the copy-nin," Hyena answered first. "Fifteen or so before that."

"Five as well, twenty before that," said Snail.

Bear soundlessly held both hands with all fingers stretched. He didn't offer anything else.

Raccoon leaned toward her so that she could hear his muffled words. "Two with this team," she heard. "Twelve before."

In case it had been uncertain before, it was abundantly clear now how much her teammates' experience outclassed hers.

"Why am I on this team again?" she asked aloud.

No one was able to answer her.

"It's not that you're not an excellent shinobi, Crow-chan," Snail explained hurriedly. "It's just that, well, on the past few missions most of us have each been doing our own thing. None of us have really had the chance to observe the full extent of your skills."

"As I said," Bear said, the pleasure in his voice gratingly apparent, "there's no time like the present."

Sakura cracked her neck and shifted to look back to the fighting grounds. The commander had apparently just finished his speech and was in the process of sitting back down. Just as five pairs of names flashed on the screen, the large brass doors to the stadium cracked open again to admit one more figure.

Mismatched eyes scanned the crowds of ANBU—who abruptly went silent, even more quickly than they had for the commander—before he shunshined to an empty seat on the judging panel and reclined into his seat. His temperament was one of a predator long impatient with complacency, feet on the long table but vibrating with pent up energy.

It would take an idiot to miss that this was the last place the copy-nin wanted to be right now.

Sakura's mouth went tight at the first sight of Kakashi in days. He hadn't even bothered to wear the ANBU mask—not that it mattered much, she realized after a moment. It wasn't like he ever bothered to disguise his hair.

They all watched as the commander shifted in his chair to say something to Kakashi. But the copy-nin barely even tilted his head to acknowledge the words, attention seemingly focused somewhere else. After a moment, the commander appeared to give up and shifted to the center of his seat again.

"Are the combatants ready?" the older man boomed.

Ten figures walked onto the fighting grounds in response.

Shinobi on either side of the stadium erected tall barriers, protecting the audience from the combatants and the respective fights from interfering with each other.

Coins were handed out to each pair, and then flipped. Genjutsu, taijustsu, ninjutsu, or kenjutsu, Sakura noted, were spar options given to the combatants.

And then the rounds began.

* * *

Randomization, she learned soon, was both a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the pairs on the grounds proved themselves to be so unevenly matched that the spar ended in less than a minute. Others, however, suffered from the lack of disparity and dragged on for almost half an hour.

By noon Sakura was stir-crazy, ready to create a small explosion so that she could escape and grab something to fill her stomach. She regretted immensely now skipping breakfast that morning.

Snail's stomach grumbled loudly beside hers as well. She rubbed it apologetically.

Protein bars were passed around.

By mid-afternoon, only Raccoon had been called to the fighting grounds. He had won the first coin toss and finished a taijutsu bout with fair ease. The second, though, had been rougher—kenjutsu and not his choice; his opponent, a heavy-set man wielding a blade the width of Raccoon himself, had emerged the winner. But at the third bout, she had learned that ninjutsu was, in fact, Raccoon's real forte.

"Will he be alright?" she heard Bear ask Hyena.

She had nodded without hesitation. "His ninjutsu is good enough to compensate for his kenjutsu. No one's going to take him if taichou makes it clear he wants him to stay."

Whether Kakashi had, in fact, 'made it clear' was a bit suspect to Sakura. In truth, the commander had seemingly directed another question to the copy-nin again, Kakashi had not responded, and no one else at the table had consequently bothered to speak up.

So, on Kakashi's team Raccoon apparently stayed.

By early evening, the sky outside had deepened into the purple-pink-orange of twilight. With the dimmed lighting where they were sitting, it was easy, somehow despite the noise, for Sakura to imagine herself comfortably in her own room, just about to sleep. (She was…tired.) The sounds were loud but also fairly repetitive—white noise, really.

The spars in front of her all started to become the same.

She didn't _exactly_ remember when she fell asleep. In truth, she wasn't really surprised that she had; she hadn't been getting much sleep the past few nights, for some reason or the other.

Next thing she knew, she was being roughly jabbed awake, from both sides of her.

"Huh?" she grunted, snapping up in her seat. "What?"

Bear looked at her like she'd been running around with her head cut off.

" _The board_ ," Hyena hissed, looking both mildly concerned and generally disapproving.

Her gaze snapped downwards and landed on the list of the next ten names.

Hers was listed there.

"Oh," she sighed tiredly. "Right, then."

Swinging herself onto the staircase, she didn't bother to shunshin and merely walked the rest of the way down. In the distance, she could see another figure already where she was supposed to be.

Sighing again, she hastened her pace.

As she stepped onto the fighting grounds, the full force of the stadium lights beat down on her. Sakura grimaced with discomfort; the sheer heat radiating from the strength of the light was a force to reckon with.

There was also—uncomfortably—a sort of nervous energy in the air, which she hadn't been able to feel from where she had been sitting, distant from the action. She felt it now. The hairs on her arms pricked and blood started pumping heavily through her body.

The Voice growled in her head, emerging from total silence without warning. She hissed warningly under breath back at it—no need to get excited, she wasn't letting it out now.

Tightening her arm guards, she didn't quite look at her opponent yet, looking instead to the two names blazoned above the part of the grounds sectioned off to them.

 _Crow vs. Robin_

Two birds. She scoffed under breath as her eyes moved downwards to the ANBU in question.

Well, she knew why he was called Robin now. He had shoulder length red hair that gleamed in the light like flashing silk. It looked…oddly familiar, actually—

"No," Sakura whispered aloud. She took a stumbling step back.

But she couldn't unsee it now. She blinked rapidly.

It was the same exact color.

"Hey there, Crow," Robin greeted, shrugging his shoulders. "You look around my age. But…"

He was seemed a few years older than her. Just like Noriko had been. Sakura's hands trembled at her sides.

"As your senior, I think I'll pick first," he said with a wink. He gestured to the shinobi handling the coin toss. "Heads."

The shinobi threw the coin and snatched it from the air in a blink of an eyes. The head of the hokage gleamed brightly.

"Taijutsu," Robin decided affably.

Sakura couldn't move her eyes off him, completely oblivious to all the other coin tosses going on around them. Eventually, a dull gong rang through the stadium, signifying the start of the spars.

"Ready?" the young man asked, a smirk in his voice. He didn't wait for an answer. In an instant, his entire form was a blur. A blur that was rushing toward her.

And all Sakura could see was the ghostly mirage of Noriko's face manifesting above his mask, just because he had similar fucking hair.

 _Move, you worthless carcass,_ the Voice snarled.

Sakura blinked dazedly, but it was too late. A fist landed in her stomach and sent her careening into the opposite of the stadium. Metal railing crumpled beneath her back. The air rushed out of her as pain seeped in.

She was shaken. Sakura had a spare moment to curse beneath her breath, before Robin was on her again.

He was quick—but not _that_ quick, not really. Certainly not near the quickest she had ever faced. But each time he twisted, the air catching strands of his hair to send them fanning out, Sakura felt like a boulder had been dropped on her all over again, and she was dazed, and precious seconds went by, and—

Wow. She hadn't gotten her ass kicked like this in a long time.

And it was the truth—she was getting her _ass kicked._

 _You worthless piece of shit, what is the point of you if you can't even handle shit like this yourself? LET ME OUT! LET ME—_

Sakura, out of the sheer rage the Voice managed to incite in her, found some clarity and landed a few well-placed blows at key points in Robin's midsection.

But they lacked her usual strength, because still, some part of her couldn't let go. And when she looked up again—a terrible, fatal mistake—it was Noriko's dying face that look back at her, a beaming smile drowning in tears.

Sakura groaned.

A fist landed soundly, truly solidly, planting into the side of her head. The force of it vibrated through her entire body, but Sakura was oblivious to it—only knew that her vision was going black.

When light returned, she was blinking up at the towering dome of the stadium.

"Robin, Crow, 1-0!" she heard a woman cry out.

A hand manifested above her. She gazed blankly at it. After a moment, it reached down and heaved her up.

Sakura managed to land on her feet. Everything around her, however, was a deluge of sensory and auditory information she had trouble processing.

"Stadium locker rooms," she heard someone say. "Until you're called for the next bout."

Robotically, she followed the figure ahead of her to a set of doors tucked into one of the walls. She kept her eyes on her feet and very carefully did not look at his hair. The brass doors opened and closed with a small creak of protest. And then she was in silence, in a cool, dark room, where there was a table filled with bandages.

"So," the ANBU next to her began with a slow smile. "No hard feelings?"

Sakura focused hard on his voice. A little higher than that of a fully grown man—but definitely lower than Noriko's. This was just another shinobi with dark red hair. It was _just_ dark red hair; she'd seen other people with red hair after Noriko and hadn't reacted like this. _Why the fuck now_?

Inhaling, Sakura steeled herself and then looked up. Her vision swam.

"No hard feelings," she returned, looking down again.

He gave a short laugh. "Great. Have to say though, I wiped the floor with you—"

He broke off, his gaze widening at something behind her. Sakura twisted to follow his glance and then froze.

Tremulous awe glowed in Robin's eyes. "Sir, it is an honor to finally meet you—"

"Scram." The word emerged in a dark rasp. Sakura grew even stiffer.

As for Robin—she wasn't sure what the ANBU thought. Whatever it was, he blinked for a few seconds in confusion. Then, the request processed. With a swift bow and a suspicious glance her way, Robin exited the room.

Sakura looked back at Kakashi with ire, waiting. "What?" she demanded finally, tone flat.

Another she hadn't really expected today was—this. Kakashi shoving her roughly into the lockers.

"What the fuck was that out there?" A guttural demand, harsh on her ears.

"Excuse me?" she gasped, mostly from incredulity.

She lifted her hands and shoved him back—he skidded a few inches. "You," she growled. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"I'm your captain," he said coldly back. "And you answer to me."

Sakura let out a harsh bark of laughter. "You think I give a fuck what you think? _Try me_ —please, give me the chance. You have no idea how long I've been waiting."

The Voice seared through her veins, and for one terrible moment, Sakura couldn't quite draw the line between it and herself.

Fingers clenched her chin beneath the surface of her mask, pulling her forward. And then the heat of him—the heat of his rage—scalded her there first, spreading after until her whole face felt like it was burning.

"Is that so?" he mocked, his voice low and dark. "And where was _this_ when that waste of space was tossing you around like a mannequin?"

Sakura stared up at him, speechless, and then pulled back, shoving his hand away from her. "Why do you even care?" she snapped. "I can count the number of times you've spoken to me—"

The fingers on her chin tightened their hold warningly.

"Drop it," Sakura gritted out.

"Maybe I was unclear before _,_ " Kakashi told her, baring his teeth from beneath his black mask. "You answer to _me_ , shinobi."

Sakura was breathless with fury.

"You want to know the truth so badly?" she said, eyes spitting venom. "It's as simple as this: I saw a ghost."

Her throat closed getting the words out.

Kakashi's expression did not shift, didn't reveal even the minutest twitch of the eye.

Her eyes stung fiercely and she shoved against the copy-nin, driving him into the opposite row of lockers, hands knotted in his flak jacket. "Did you hear me?" she grunted out, "I _said_ I saw a ghost."

His hands snapped to her wrists, hot—almost molten—fingers burning into the skin there. Not pulling, not yet. But enough to make her feel his strength; and she could.

Her mouth was coated with blood—probably her teeth too—and she knew the same dark brown-red dripped from her nose, but she couldn't feel any of those things just now. Not really. She only felt _hate._ And, perhaps, a terrible, agonizing emptiness where happiness and peace once could have been.

"Don't pretend now, taichou," Sakura whispered, mouth trembling. "Don't."

Kakashi's dark grey and red eyes traced the pattern on her mask.

"Pretend?" he said tonelessly.

"That you don't know," she hissed, and her diaphragm was twitching now—struggling—couldn't find its proper rhythm. "That I wasn't there."

Who would have guessed—that 'Haruno Sakura' would know something about the copy-nin that 'Saori Mori' didn't? Because Saori alone would not have known Kaido had been a ghost of Haku. But Sakura did.

She didn't get to gloat over his response—didn't even get to look at his face to see if there _was_ any. Something was crumbling inside her, an inestimable force wreaking havoc on her insides suddenly. Sakura doubled over, not knowing how to fight it when it was herself, trying her best to hold herself together. Her forehead scraped against the rough material of flak jacket.

He'd felt this too. She knew he had. This feeling, like there was no more air left. Or maybe that there never had been, and she'd just been pretending the whole time.

But all the while, he felt like a wall of stone, his hands still circled like chains around her wrists.

Sakura closed her eyes, fighting for breath fiercely, fighting the pain. "You're going to deny it… _taichou_?"

With difficulty, she craned her head upward—unable yet to straighten her back—to survey him.

"Stop rambling," he said tightly, controlled.

"Rambling," she smiled humorlessly. Then, her mouth flattened, and her eyes were stony. Because she knew he was lying. _She knew it_.

His voice may have been controlled. But his gaze revealed everything.

"Fine," she said softly. "You want me to win? I'll win the next two in less than a minute: kenjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu, ninjutsu, it doesn't matter. I'll do it."

Sakura used the hold he still had on her to yank him closer, until his eyes were level with hers and nothing so arbitrary as height could distance them any longer.

"And when I'm firmly back on the team, I'll have all the time in the world to _make_ you tell the truth."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Sorry for the wait! Please let me know what you think! Your comments mean the world to me-seriously, I reread each and every one for motivation to keep writing these stories :)


	13. Chapter 13: Scalded

Sakura stilled, the tendons in her forearm tensed as she held the chokuto's edge a scarce millimeter from skin.

The world was silent around her. She watched the pale column of skin beneath the blade retreat— _swallowing_ , some part of her remembered—with rapt attention.

Then, slowly, sound filtered in: shouts from the crowd, the sound of mouths chewing on ration bars, the clangs and thuds from the other fights around them.

"Crow, Mouse, 2-2!"

Sakura blinked. It took her another moment to pull back the blade and offer a hand. The man ignored it and flipped into a low crouch before standing.

The shinobi who had announced their respective standing scores gestured them to the space in front of the long platform where the ANBU captains sat.

"Wait there until the other matches are finished," she said brusquely. Sakura and Mouse made their way to where she had indicated.

Mouse watched the other matches intently as they waited. Sakura, in the same time, struggled to make sense of what had happened the last two matches. She had vowed to both win and finish the bouts in less than a minute. She hadn't expected this drive to inadvertently catapult her into such a bizarre headspace, where now she could scarcely even recall the details of what had went down. She had been hyper-focusing—myopic, and now distance somehow made what she had been looking at blurry.

Almost fifteen minutes went by before the sound of the gong being struck thundered through the stadium, announcing that everyone in Sakura's set of bouts had all finished their assigned three. Nine other individuals lined up alongside her.

She fought to keep her frame steady and unflinching when Robin sidled up next to her.

"Hey you," he said lazily, "You know, I think this might just be the year the copy-nin takes me. Speaking of which, how did that chat go? Didn't look too good to me when I left."

Sakura shrugged in response, gaze drilling straight forward.

An ANBU with a monkey mask, who stood at the very right end of the line, was the first to go. Her score was announced—one win, two losses—and then her time in ANBU—four months. Following a gesture from the commander, the captains began their discussion.

The noise of the stadium was enough that their words had been impossible to hear from the seats; but here, every word was perfectly audible, to all ten of them. Monkey hadn't done any worse than most of the first year ANBU, but the captains didn't hold back in highlighting the flaws of her fights. In the end, both her current captain and two others made bids for her.

When the matter was settled, the captains' attention went to the ANBU to the left of her. Sakura realized, a little too belatedly, that this ordering meant she would be the last to go.

She stared stoically at a beam holding the dome aloft as she waited (she was very carefully _not_ glancing at Kakashi). It was easy to ignore the proceedings—that was, until the captains' next subject was the figure next to her.

Robin straightened to his full height.

"Robin, three wins and no losses," the commander announced as prologue to the discussion.

"Damn right," the redhead beside her murmured, voice thick with satisfaction.

"Strong candidate," a clinical, yet melodious voice noted. "Won in taijutsu, ninjutsu, and then kenjutsu—clearly well-balanced."

"He's young too," another captain said bluntly. "A good part of his tenure is still ahead of him."

A few other captains chipped in with similar remarks, while the others nodded in silence.

A female captain with a cat mask swiftly prompted. "Who's interested?"

"I'll take him," the same woman with the clinical tone offered. "I could use someone as versatile as he is."

"His strength merits a higher level team," another captain argued.

"He is very strong," the commander nodded slowly.

"My team has been down one since Squirrel retired," a new voice intoned. "I could take him in."

"Perhaps," the commander said ambivalently. "But now that I think about it, that team of _his_ would be a good place…"

All of the captains—and all ten ANBU lined up before them—shifted to see who he was talking about.

Kakashi's head rolled carelessly to meet the address. "Did you say something?"

The commander didn't even blink. "That kid," the older man repeated, deep bass voice resonating, "he should be placed on your team."

If it were possible, Robin's back straightened even more beside her. Sakura watched as Kakashi's mismatched eyes narrowed above his exposed black mask. He didn't even bother looking at the ANBU in question.

"No."

"Excuse me?" the commander said, tone flat. It wasn't a question.

"It appears you're becoming hard of hearing in your advanced years," Kakashi drawled disinterestedly. His tone became a fraction deadlier. "I said no."

Robin's shoulders were tight now.

"And as you are well-aware, this is a democratic process," the commander responded icily. "One in which my opinion has weighty influence over that of others', because they trust _my_ judgement, _my_ years of experience. So you will have to convince the council of your peers—by which I mean, you will first have to convince me—if you want anything else, Kakashi."

"My team already has six members."

"At least one spot has marked itself so far as ripe for switching."

The copy-nin's demeanor appeared to become even more irreverent. "Oh?"

"I believe he's referring to Crow," the woman with the cat mask offered lightly, abundantly aware that her fellow captain was already aware. For the benefit of the rest of the captains, ostensibly, she pointed at Sakura.

Sakura stared at the lone finger pointed in her direction. Yes, she'd initially wanted to get kicked off Kakashi's team. But then, in the heat of the moment, she'd gone and made that promise. Now, it was a matter of pride; _now_ , Sakura needed to be on this team.

"Two wins and one loss," the commander recounted coolly. "Not a bad record by any means. Her two wins were finished admittedly quickly, but she's not the first to finish a bout in less than a minute. And pointedly, her one loss is to this ANBU here. It's clear which one is better."

Kakashi swung his propped feet to the ground, soundlessly. He then leaned against the table, the pale of his forearms a jarring contrast to the steel surface beneath.

"Deaf as well as blind, then," Kakashi said coldly. "My current shinobi beat a kenjutsu specialist at kenjutsu and, before that, that one over there—" he pointed at a heavy set man with a shock of purple hair—"whose taijutsu is only slightly more pathetic than—alas, I can't remember his name. Her loss to him was only fluke."

"Robin," the captain seated next to him muttered helpfully.

"Robin's," Kakashi repeated slowly, his tongue flicking mockingly over the syllables. "You want to place someone on my team? At least choose one who would survive more than a day."

"His ninjutsu bout," a gruff-voice captain added. "He did exceptionally well there."

"Yes," the commander built on this intently, voice booming, "his jutsus were complex and highly suited for the combat work your team works in. Not to mention, his kekkei genkai—"

"Now, I would hope you knew better than that, _commander_ ," the copy-nin said coldly. The title was delivered with as little regard as possible.

"She's two years his junior," the commander growled, "and Crow is still a first year ANBU. What have we seen today? She beat a kenjutsu specialist—great, but kenjutsu isn't the firepower we need on our elite teams. And as you stated so eloquently, neither Robin nor he—" Sakura's gaze snapped for a second to the heavy set man she had fought in her second bout—"are taijutsu prodigies. So she lost to one and beat the other. What does that amount to? We simply have to believe you when you say she's skilled enough? Well, I ask then: what makes her unique, _copy-nin_? What makes her stand from the pack? Robin's skills will improve with time—will become finely honed under your team's influence—and his kekkei genkai is unique; how will she compare then?"

Sakura's lips felt like they were bloodless. That's probably why she could scarcely tell when they opened of their own volition.

Fuck this. _Fuck_. She had driven herself into this corner now, hadn't she, where suddenly she couldn't _bear_ not being on this team.

"If I may."

The commander looked at her immediately; despite the mask, she could see the way the skin around his eye was contorted upwards, as though he were raising an incredulous brow at her gall.

Sakura's mouth twitched. "A kekkei genkai is only a weapon. Some shinobi are born with weapons in their body; the rest of us merely have to build them or find them outside of ourselves. I wouldn't dismiss diligence and talent so easily in the face of a bloodline limit…"

Should she?

"…and idiots from renowned, supposedly all-powerful clans die all the time precisely from their idiocy."

That had been a little more direct than she had intended. Oh well.

There was choked laughter from the ANBU seated throughout the stadium. The captains controlled themselves better.

"Enough." The commander slammed both his palms flat on the table. "Seeing as this asshole here will seemingly do anything to make sure that Robin doesn't get on his team, can _anyone_ else here—someone I actually trust not to lie to my face—attest to this rookie's skill? I'm not putting this ANBU back on the most combative team there is in this organization only to serve her as cannon fodder. _I_ am not in the habit of serving mere body parts of fellow shinobi to the parents who raised them after only months of service."

Sakura's lips tightened.

The air within the stadium suddenly became thick and bone-cold as Kakashi's killing intent lashed out in terrible tides, washing over the stadium's occupants without remorse. Even Sakura, who was more used to this than most others, fought to control her instinctive urge to lash out in defense.

The broader, older man didn't shift an inch, but Sakura could see that his whole body was tense. "Settle down now, soldier—"

"She was on my team before, commander," a familiar voice barked out.

It was Tiger, from her first ANBU team, standing some rows above them.

"I was Rabbit's second-in-command," she continued, "and Crow was one of eight other rookies. We were attacked a hundred kilometers out in the thick of the forest by a battalion of the invisible shinobi."

The 'invisible shinobi'—as they had been aptly dubbed—had been enemy combats against Sakura on her last mission before Kakashi. She hadn't realized, however, that there were _more_ of them.

Based on how countless heads in the stadium suddenly snapped in her direction at this news, it seemed that the invisible shinobi were a pervasive problem. Knowing how they had mowed down her first ANBU team, she readily understood how deadly they could be.

Sakura's fists tightened at her sides. How many ANBU had they lost already?

"We were not prepared for the attack," Tiger said after a brief pause. "It would have been a slaughter. Rabbit was already down. The rest of us were in disarray. We _would_ have been slaughtered if not for Crow."

"What happened?" the commander requested with ill-hidden impatience.

"She's a genjutsu user," Tiger said faintly, "She could _see_ them without a dojutsu. And after she could see them—I don't know how to describe it…"

Sakura's skin crawled with discomfort. It didn't help that what Tiger was describing was the Voice. For the worst of her to be exposed inadvertently like this, no matter how unknowing the audience was…

Tiger's voice emerged again, controlled, her words succinct. "They were meant to slaughter us. Single-handedly, she began to slaughter them."

"How many?" the captain with the cat mask asked.

"Between fifty to sixty," the woman responded after a moment of consideration, "and then the copy-nin's team crossed paths with ours and finished the rest. After that, Crow was…essentially moved to his team."

The commander stared at her stonily for a long while, apparently at a loss for words. Sakura could read from the set of his shoulders that this wasn't the outcome he had wanted—whether that had anything to do with Sakura herself or merely wanting to impose his will over Kakashi, she did not know.

At last, he gave a low grunt. "Fine. Crow remains on the team—any opposed?"

Not a single hand went up.

"Now, as for Robin…"

Sakura couldn't quite ignore the glare burning into from her left.

* * *

Snail whooped as they muscled their way into the bar through the heavy crowd, "What did I say? I knew we would all make it through!"

Bear grunted beside Sakura, shooting her a look. "Some of us, _barely_."

"Get over yourself, Bear," Hyena said dryly, sweeping a scratched hand through her hair—a purely lucky shot, she maintained. "Tonight's the one night you don't have to pay to get over that massive stick up your ass. Luxuriate in it."

That seemed to be, indeed, the attitude of every ANBU now populating The Shush-ya, the largest bar in Konoha, which was also conveniently operated by shinobi for shinobi. It seemed that it was tradition for the ANBU to treat themselves to an open bar and have the entire place to themselves following every set of rounds; the hokage, apparently, generously covered the cost.

Sakura observed as the music picked up around them, a thudding drum intermixed with the sultry wails of the biwa. Alcohol passed easily through the masses—whole bottles were handed around rather than glasses, and masks shifted just slightly to imbibe them.

Snail was the first to get her hands on a bottle. Taking a long swill, more than enough for her short stature, she passed the bottle next to Sakura. Sakura looked at it skeptically for a moment, then shrugged and drank some herself. The rich, bitter taste went down with some difficulty, burning the entire way. When she lifted her lips from the rim of the bottle, she grimaced and rubbed at her lips.

"Easy there," Raccoon remarked with some amusement. She handed him the bottle, but he only passed it onto Hyena. "I'm good tonight."

Hyena took her own portion and then passed it to Bear, only to find that he'd already gotten his hands on another bottle. Rolling her eyes, she placed the near-empty bottle on a vacated table.

Sakura examined the bottle with interest. She could already feel the effects.

She had had alcohol for the first time years ago, so she was no stranger to it. Truthfully, she knew her tolerance much better now. Sure enough, she felt only a certain extra warmth and light buzz, but nothing more. If she still needed to kill, she could do it without a second thought.

A second after that reflection pulsed through her mind, Sakura flinched.

Fuck. Was this how it was going to be the rest of her life? To kill or to be killed.

 _It's a dog eat dog world_ , the Voice crooned, before giving a shrill laugh. Sakura hissed as the sound scratched against the walls of her brain.

"I'm going to dance," Snail called out, pointing to the mass of congregated bodies at the center of the large open space. She gave them a short wave and then disappeared into the throng of shadowed figures.

There was something pleasantly bizarre about it all, Sakura reflected to herself. They all wore the same ANBU uniforms they had fought in earlier today, complete with bandages and newly won scars as well. ANBU captains were present also, though they seemed to keep entirely to themselves. The contrast between the actual rounds and the atmosphere of…whatever _this_ was, however, was—laughable.

The next few minutes passed by easily with sporadic conversation between Hyena, Bear, Raccoon, and herself—none of them seemed desiring of a prolonged discussion, content to relax mainly in silence. Unfortunately as time passed, the temperature of the bar steadily increased as more bodies were crammed into the space.

"I'll be back," Sakura told them, fanning herself.

Muscling her way through the bodies was a task that took longer than she would have thought (sadly, she couldn't exactly drive her fist into the ground to make the sea of bodies part, though part of her considered it). Eventually, she reached an open space of the wooden counter.

"How can I help you?" a short man asked swiftly, hands busy at work preparing two different drinks.

"A glass of ice."

He didn't blink an eye at the request. Hand darting out with impressive speed, he procured a glass and used a kunai blade to slide a large cube of ice into smaller slivers. He handed the cold glass to her.

Sakura took it gratefully, allowing her hot palms to rest against the cool surface for a little while.

The music twisted in and out of the space around her—sometimes distinct and keening, other times muffled and incomprehensible. Closing her eyes, she sucked on one ice chip at a time, enjoying the spread of liquid each time the ice melted.

She felt a body slide into the small space between her and her former neighbor. Sakura's hands spasmed for her weapons instinctively at the imposition, before she eased them consciously.

"A glass umeshu, please. Actually? Make that two. One for me and one for her."

Out of distant curiosity, Sakura darted a look to her newest neighbor. That's how she realized by 'her,' the newcomer ANBU meant Sakura.

"Unless you're opposed?" the girl—she sounded only a few years older—behind the tortoise mask intoned lightly, tilting her head to the side.

Sakura considered that for a moment. She was still far from drunk; one glass wouldn't push her significantly closer there either. "Sure."

"Excellent," the word was drawn slowly, delicately, "Two glasses of umeshu then."

The same short man silently went about preparing the drinks. Sakura returned her attention to the ice chips, surveying another one with almost academic interest.

"Crow, right?" the voice beside her prompted again, pointing at her mask.

Sakura turned to look again at her. Apparently, she was waiting for an answer. "Yes," she said slowly. Then, she felt obligated to return: "Tortoise?"

Tortoise hummed in assent, reaching out to collect the two glasses from the bartender. Holding one, she slid the other to Sakura.

Sakura took a sip without much ceremony, surprised to find that she actually enjoyed the taste. She had come to believe that all alcohol tasted generally shitty, desirable only because of its impact.

"Good, isn't it?" Tortoise prompted.

"It is."

The aftertaste was also pleasant.

"You have beautiful hair."

Sakura saw the hand move toward her head—slow enough that she could shift comfortably to avoid the impending contact, which is why she ultimately allowed it. Foreign fingers curled through the strands of her hair, pulling gently so that there was a light tension at the base of her scalp.

"It's fake. A jutsu to disguise more identifiable hair."

The fingers let go of her hair as Tortoise gave a short laugh. "Hmmm," she said, cupping her chin in her hand, "you really don't know how this works, do you?"

Sakura's brows furrowed.

Tortoise surveyed her for a long moment. She had unusual eyes, Sakura noted—purple, if they were real—that stood out all the more because of her black hair.

The girl leaned forward, and Sakura saw her mask shift the minutest bit, as though she were smiling below the porcelain.

"I want to kiss you," she asked straightforwardly. "Can I?"

Sakura tossed another ice chip into her mouth, unblinking. "Why?"

"Hmmm," Tortoise hummed again, tapping her nails against the wood. "Because I like your voice, I think. A little low, a little arrogant. And I'm in—how should I put it?—that sort of mood."

Sakura glanced down at the glass in her hand, swirled its contents.

It wasn't something she had explicitly contemplated before. It wasn't the alcohol that made her consider her it now. The truth was…

This fascination of lips on lips. She'd ascribed to it as a young teenager, because that's what children did. Abstractly, it was a ridiculous thing—evolutionarily, the contact was completely arbitrary. Then, recently, she'd experienced the contact _once_ and it had felt…

She didn't really want to think about now, but—would it feel the same with Tortoise too?

"Why not?" she wondered after a short pause.

Sakura knew by the way the mask shifted again that Tortoise was smiling again.

The other girl shifted closer to her on her chair, knees slotting into place between Sakura's perched legs. Tilting her head to the side—making eye contact the entire time—she slowly slid her mask upwards to reveal her lips. Sakura watched the subtle adjustment with interest; she was a little intrigued by how this would happen, whether or not their masks would still knock into each other.

"May I?" Tortoise asked lightly, purple eyes gleaming.

Sakura nodded, and a tanned hand rose to brush the edge of Sakura's mask, nudging it slightly upward. The increased exposure provided a new depth of sensory information. The air had become slightly humid, and she could taste the smell of incense, blood, and alcohol on her tongue.

With a curve to her lips, Tortoise approached until her eyes bore straight into Sakura's. Belatedly, she realized that this was because their lips were now touching. They shifted. A breath passed between their lips. It was swallowed. There was nothing shy or tentative about the contact.

A tongue curled lightly against Sakura's lips. After a moment, Sakura's mouth parted. In the same instant, Sakura's hand left her glass to grasp a hip, hand curling into the flak jacket there.

She had thought their masks would collide; she found the solution now, though her body moved her there unthinkingly. She pushed forward, compelling Tortoise to tilt her head slightly back, and the other girl slanted her mouth beneath Sakura's.

This was—pleasant, Sakura reflected. Her heart didn't pound, her blood didn't rush violently through her veins; it was a gentle, trickling kind of warmth, like sinking into a warm bath. Tortoise made a small, breathy sound, and then stood, slotting her body more firmly into the spaces of Sakura's.

Somewhere, somehow, even though the other ANBU had instigated the contact, Sakura had assumed control of the kiss—based on the sounds emerging from Tortoise's throat, she preferred it this way. Tortoise's moans, indeed, were a constant, throaty accompaniment to the strings singing smoothly in the background.

Curiously, Sakura let her tongue graze the roof of the mouth beneath hers. A strangled sound of pleasure was her reward. Smirking—and maybe feeling a little more now the alcohol buzzing through her system—her hand left Tortoise's hip to grasp her chin, pressing more intently.

People had been passing behind them the entire time. The bar was busy, naturally, and more than one ANBU had found their way to the counter to order drinks. So, the fact that a group of shinobi paused right behind them right at that moment wasn't an immediate cry for Sakura's full attention.

When the sound of low voices and laughter sounded, her eyes flashed in irritation, but she paid no more mind to it.

Then she heard a few jeers, clearly from the individuals standing right behind them

Sakura tensed, pulling her mouth from Tortoise's. Before she could turn, a strong hand slid from her hair to her upper arm, stopping her. Sakura looked at the ANBU, whose purple eyes were locked on the jeering shinobi.

"Don't," the girl said softly, eyes wide.

Sakura's gaze narrowed.

"Just ignore it," she pressed.

Despite her stiffness, Sakura let the other girl pull her forward again. Their lips met once more. Tortoise gave a small sigh and locked her hands behind Sakura's head.

"Hey ladies," a low, male voice called out amidst riotous laughter, "why don't you remove those masks and give us a real show?"

In the space between one breath and the next, Sakura ripped through Tortoise's locked hands. A second later, she had the ANBU pinned against the bar wall by the throat.

"Crow, don't—!" she heard behind her.

"The fuck do you think you're doing, kunoichi?" the man growled, the stink of alcohol thick on his breath.

Sakura didn't know where the sudden burst of temper had come from, but she was seeing red. "Just thought I'd give you the show you asked for."

"Easy there," a slow, lazy voice added from behind her—one of the _friends_ —"It's Crow, isn't it? I remember you from earlier today. Nice speech and all."

"But you know," the man continued, laughing still, but there was edge of warning to it now, "your quota for insubordination without consequence is about filled up, don't you think?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

" _Leave it_ ," Tortoise said lowly, purple eyes pleading. "Crow, they're—"

"You can call me taichou. Him too."

"— _ANBU captains_."

"You should listen to your friend," the man said flatly.

Sakura's mouth flattened. So they outranked both of them? She angled her head back, to survey the small group. She recognized them now—each one an ANBU captain who had sat at the table beside the commander. Fine. She didn't actually give a fuck.

But then she darted a glance to the other girl, who obviously did.

"No harm done," she said reluctantly, after a long pause. She brushed off his shoulders, mostly for show, and stepped back. "He's all yours."

She turned, shoulders tight and struggling to control her temper. Tortoise was pale, her purple eyes still wide, but her body slowly began to relax—

"Sluts these days, you know, someone just has to teach them a proper lesson—"

Sakura's face was contorted into a snarl. Without even turning to look, her hand snapped back and grabbed the new person who had spoken. She saw his hands move with blinding speed, no doubt to pull out weapons; before he could, she threw him toward the counter.

He slid down the length of the wood, knocking empty and filled drinks alike that had been placed there.

He would have slid further, if not for a pale, scarred arm stopping him. The owner of the arm coolly picked up the cup of sake that had just been placed in front of him and smoothly tossed it back.

Though other ANBU captains crowded around the counter around him, his feet were outstretched to prop on the adjacent stool, taking two seats for himself. His gaze was half-lidded, the hitai-ate positioned to cover the sharingan—but his lone, charcoal eye drilled into Sakura, dark and intense, looking for all the world as though he had been watching the entire time.

Sakura's spine snapped straight, face hot. How _long_ had he been there—

She felt a hand knot itself into her hair, cutting off the thought. Silently, she reached up to cup the side of the man's head and drove it into a stool with a loud clang.

"Crow," Tortoise begged, " _Stop it_. It isn't worth it…"

 _Shut up_ , the Voice growled. Sakura, at this point, largely agreed. She had tried walking away. They were the ones who hadn't let her peaceably do that much.

The man who had intervened earlier now stepped forward. He was tall and lanky, with a dangerous grace to his movements.

"Look, Crow," he said lightly, "my friends here have had some drink. They like to talk—" he shrugged—"It didn't really need to come to this. But now? Now, this is has become a matter of insubordination, one that I have to deal with."

He made a show of pulling out his weapons and piling them on the nearest table. "I'll go easy on you, alright?" he said mildly, "Just fists."

Sakura cocked her head to the side, dropping the unconscious man in her hand so he hit the floor. Then, without pause, she began stripping herself of her weapons too.

"Are you crazy?" an unwanted Samaritan hissed behind her, " _Keep the weapons_ or you won't stand a chance!"

"You should listen to him," the man said amusedly.

Sakura tossed the last kunai. "Oh," she said, "Thought he was talking to you."

He shrugged again. "It's your face."

Without any further preamble, he feinted and lashed out with enough force to crush her skull against the wall behind. Sakura twisted, kicking off the same wall to drive her elbow backwards.

He evaded with a fluid motion she vaguely recognized. Her gaze moved from his palms briefly to his eyes. Pale orbs peered out between dark lashes.

A Hyuuga.

Immediately, Sakura created more space between her body and his. She considered her situation. He could see into the chakra points of her body; her medical knowledge of the body made her more competitive than most, but she couldn't expect to pinpoint at the same level as he could. There was no point competing on that front.

No weapons? Fine. That didn't rule out—

"Maa, look at the damage you're doing to that wall."

Sakura became an impressive example of abruptly, arrested motion. Gaping, she turned in the direction of the copy-nin, who still was seated nonchalantly on two seats.

"Taichou," the man next to her said a little belatedly, stiff as well. Some part of Sakura's mind was functional enough to realize this as strange; technically, this man and Kakashi were the same rank, there was no need for the honorific.

Most of her mind, however, was devoted to the shock of hearing something as close to the lazy, nonchalant jounin captain from before as she had in _years_.

"Taichou," the man repeated again, "Crow's actions were insubordinate—"

"Renya, Renya," the copy-nin interrupted in a mild, scolding tone—the ANBU captain flinched, Sakura continued to gape—"you know the hokage isn't going to be too pleased having to cover additional costs. You should learn to relax. Have a spa day. Read a book. Take a nap."

Kakashi swiped another cup of sake, one that was not his (but other than a squeak, the shinobi didn't muster any further protest). He circled the contents with sharp, subtle motions of the wrist.

Then he looked up again, and his face—or what was visible of it—had transformed. The guise of the disinterested bystander had been all but cast off.

"Didn't anyone teach you not to make a mess?" he questioned softly, darkly.

Sakura was finally yanked out of her state of shock by that ridiculous remark. Unable to control herself, she scoffed lightly beneath her breath. If anyone was messy...

His gaze snapped to her instantly.

"You," he muttered, pacing toward her, "you're really _something_ aren't you?"

Her lips twitched. "I try, taichou."

"Perhaps you've forgotten. I've thrown you into a tree." A warning, she interpreted.

Sakura's gaze narrowed. "As I recall, my fist made contact. With your face. Multiple times."

His eyebrow twitched. "You shattered a boulder. _When I threw you into that as well_."

"A testament to my strength," she sneered.

Kakashi's attention drilled into her. He didn't seem to remember that the Hyuuga even existed any more.

"Follow," he demanded. He spun on his heel and moved toward the exit of the bar.

Sakura watched him brows raised. A hand brushed her arm, and she jolted, looking to her side.

"Are you okay?" Tortoise murmured, voice low and sweet, "I was so worried—"

" _Follow_ ," the copy-nin snarled behind him, cutting her off.

Sakura let air hiss loudly through her teeth. Sliding her hands into the pockets of her flak jacket, she gave an awkward, apologetic nod to the girl and then left her and the bar.

The cool, outside air hit her with a welcome chill, drying the slight dampness on her skin. She tilted her head back and inhaled. Her head was rushing a little—the alcohol, no doubt.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw Kakashi standing in front of her in the narrow alley way.

"…another unwarranted lecture, taichou?"

His voice was low, derisive, when it emerged. "If you can't muster the respect, shinobi, you might try skipping the title altogether."

"I see," Sakura nodded sagely. "Like how you used 'commander' earlier today."

His gaze was slitted as he peered down at her, the breadth of his shoulders silhouetted by the moonlight. Suddenly, his nostrils flared.

"You stink of her," he said, disgusted.

Taken aback, it took her a moment to understand whom he was referring to. Then, she was confused that he mentioned it. Were they merely going for the obvious? Fine.

"And you're a coward who can't tell the truth."

"Don't test me," Kakashi said, voice dangerous. He leaned closer, nostrils flaring once again.

And that was only fuel to the fire. Hot, fiery blood pumped through her veins; she had burned through the alcohol now; all that was left was the headiness from an unfinished fight.

"Coward," she charged coldly. "There's nothing _to_ test—"

Her mask was ripped off her face. Sakura's eyes widened at the new sensation of cool air on her cheeks and forehead.

Her gaze moved, and she found Kakashi holding the mask in his hand. He stared at it intensely.

"Has anyone ever told you, Saori Mori, that you're the kind where your voice says one thing," he commented lowly. "but your face says something entirely else."

She seethed. "And here I thought you had a fascination for ripping off unsuspecting people's masks."

Kakashi's eyes slowly moved from her mask in his hand to Sakura's face. And as soon as his eyes landed there she was—

(rambling and _speaking of masks, when you walk around with hair and eyes like that, everyone already fucking knows who you are, so what's the point—)_

A manic sort of agitated rage made Sakura pale, made her lips tight and her fists clench.

He took a step closer to her, silent.

"Stop," she called out loud—commanded. The hoarse, venomous word echoed in the alley way.

Kakashi stilled immediately.

She breathed rapidly, ribcage heaving like she couldn't intake enough air quickly enough.

She saw a pair of lips curl beneath the black mask. And then he leaned, a movement so swift and sharp it was a blur, until his face was a scarce inch from hers.

The pair of charcoal and red eyes—the tomoe spinning in a dizzying revolution—were hot on her.

"Coward," he breathed.

Sakura gritted her teeth. Sneering, she straightened to her full height. " _I'm not_."

Raising an eyebrow, gaze still just as forcible, he raised an arm slowly—slow enough that she could move, find a kunai and attempt to stab him, or run, if she wanted. Sakura jerked her chin upward and merely stared at it in contempt.

"Go on," she goaded.

She wasn't sure what she expected. A punch, perhaps. Maybe a slap, though that somehow seemed uncharacteristic. She had thought he wanted to put her in place, and while Sakura was never a glutton for punishment, she wouldn't be called a _coward_ in the face of it either. Did she think it would be rightful punishment? No. But Kakashi was her 'taichou'; and more importantly, she _would_ get her own later.

Or, she _would_ have gotten her own, that is—if that had been what he had done.

Instead, his hand reached chin first, a searing, brief touch. And Sakura recoiled. Until, glaring, she held herself steady once more.

Still mocking, he then moved to the back of her neck, touching her there just as briefly. The muscles in her upper back clenched, provoked by the contact.

Sakura exhaled a sharp breath, angry and confused.

Then his hand, calloused and scarred, paused in front of her mouth. And that's when she realized what he was doing.

He was erasing. The scent _._

Kakashi held himself still with the dedicated patience of a practiced predator. Or at least, that's what Sakura tried to make herself believe.

Because there was something unnerving, now, about the content of his gaze; the way his lips were clearly parted beneath the black mask; the way the arm possessed by this raised hand was an object of tight restraint, as though repressing a—a helpless urge, that his hand, fingers, and every limb had been made a slave to.

He waited. And Sakura didn't know why. It made her angrier still.

"Go on," she snarled. " _Go on_."

(Later, she wouldn't know why she said it.)

He did. Without blinking, without moving otherwise an inch—though it seemed like an entirely new animation could be seen in his features—the tips of calloused fingers grazed her lips, scalding them.

And Sakura burned. Hot, molten, uncontrollable. In the next breath, she shunshined to her tiny apartment thirty blocks away.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thank you so much for all those comments-this chapter practically wrote itself, fueled by those beauties. Hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you thought :)

(also, I really hope I don't have to say this, but if you have an issue with Sakura kissing another girl...don't bother leaving a comment complaining. It's 2019, folks. get with the program.)

Hope those of you in college had a wonderful spring break! I'm crying, having to return lol. Until next time!


	14. Chapter 14: Itachi

Sakura's fingers knotted in the hair of the woman pressed hotly against her.

"I—" the woman's eyes fluttered helplessly, "I'm going to—"

"Me too," the man behind Sakura whined, his hands tight on her hips.

"Not yet," Sakura hissed, teeth clenched.

"I can't," he gasped for breath. He moved against her with desperate force. Sakura snarled into the open air, needing the burning there—

The man behind her muffled his cries into her dull pink hair as he climaxed.

 _Let's gut him_ , the Voice said rasped.

"Touch me," the woman pleaded against her lips, interrupting her thoughts. Her blue eyes glistened.

Sakura shelved her own frustration for the moment. She shifted closer, hand sliding through long brown hair, down the valley between breasts, to the hot, silken space between two, smooth thighs. The woman—Hitomi, she recalled—threw her head back as she keened, hair plastered to her neck with sweat.

Fingers curled into Sakura, quick and greedy. Air hissed from between Sakura's teeth, as that—

 _—_ the _pulsing_ below her abdomen, a throbbing that made the hair on her skin rise and her skin feel hot ( _scalded_ ) and uncomfortably _tight_ —

The man (Raido, he had declared shortly before the ongoing proceedings) shifted to mouth at Hitomi's neck. Eyes locked onto Sakura's mouth, the other woman gave a shrill cry as she came.

For a moment, the only sound in the room was that of ragged breaths. Then, the man and woman crumpled against the cool sheets of the bed, faces slack with pleasure.

Sakura leaned back against the headboard beside them. Glancing down, she contemplated herself. Had she—?

She had. Somewhere along the way. It had been so silent, so mild and underwhelming in its nature, that she had hardly noticed it.

But there was a slight soreness, deeply, invisibly—in the muscles she had never worked before, yes. Otherwise, nothing about her situation _had changed_. (She still felt…that infernal knot of seething, insatiable hunger in her lower abdomen, which had been brought to life as soon as _those_ fingers had grazed her lips—)

Sakura shifted from the bed to stand, aware they probably watched. Once, she would have blushed and been horrified by the prospect of this. Now, her body had served so many more infinitely more important purposes, that she could hardly remember why she could have felt self-conscious of something so insignificant.

"You could stay…" Raido asked suggestively, his tone suggesting more would follow than just sleep.

After straightening the disarray of pale pink hair on her head, Sakura silently finished pulling on the clothes she had discarded a little more than ten minutes ago. The grey-green pants and black shirt weren't normally what she wore when undisguised, but they were all that she had managed to grab.

She would have had the presence of mind to change into her usual clothes, too, if she hadn't been—

She frowned privately, taking the moment now to finally reflect on how she had arrived here. This certainly hadn't been the plan. She had shunshined home. _That_ had been the plan.

Only, then, she had noticed leaving hadn't been enough to escape consequence entirely from her…previous encounter. It became immediately evident that things weren't quite _alright_. Her hand had barely grazed the door knob, really, before she had been distracted by this lamentable itch in…

In her cunt, she thought coolly. She had killed people. What was the sense in shying away from _this_?

First, she had thought to ignore it. That soon appeared patently ostensibly as every step she took, every chance in which the inner skin of her thigh _grazed_ her _—_ it was impossibly distracting. How long would it last? How could she possibly _sleep_ like this?

And then had she thought: an itch. Well, an itch could be scratched, couldn't it?

Why _shouldn't_ she scratch it?

It was entirely natural, though the timing was a bit unfortunate (poor timing, that was all it was, she assured herself). All she needed to do was visit another bar to find someone to do the job. To discover what all the fuss was about.

That was how she had ended up here.

"Some other time," she answered finally. Sakura perched on the open window sill, and then launched onto the nearby roof before taking off in a sprint to her apartment.

Even the vision Konoha presented at night—silent and deadly, but also beautiful—was not enough to improve her mood.

As she landed her apartment building, her thoughts took another direction altogether, sensing a foreign chakra presence right in front of her door. Her hands immediately went for her weapons, then stilled. She knew that chakra very well.

The figure in front of her door stopped his loud knocking, spinning to her with a pale face when she suddenly appeared.

"Naruto?" Sakura asked cautiously. "What are you doing here?"

"It's Gaara," he said urgently, voice cracking as he spoke, "He's been kidnapped by that—that group called Akatsuki."

Sakura's mouth parted; then her eyes fell to the scroll held tightly in Naruto's hand.

"We were supposed to leave ten minutes ago, but you weren't there," he said in a rush. "I thought you must have missed the summons because you were sleeping. Kakashi-sensei said we should leave without you, but the rest—"

She unlocked the door to her apartment and retrieved the pack hanging on the hook inside, precisely for emergencies like these. She wished she would have had the time to at least…shower, but—

"I'm ready. Let's go."

Naruto exhaled like a great burden had been relieved off his shoulders. Exiting the same way she had just entered, the two of them took to the roofs again and moved in the direction of the forest.

"Are we the only team being sent?" Sakura asked.

"Team 10, Team Guy also," Naruto said grimly. "And Hinata—the message said Gaara's brother had been poisoned."

They travelled the rest of the distance in silence. As they came upon the edge of the forest, Sakura swallowed hard, forcing blankness on her face.

"I told you your student would eventually find her way," Gai boomed.

"She's cost us irretrievable time," Kakashi bit out. Sakura tried _very hard_ not to look at him "We leave _now._ "

He took off onto the trees. After a moment, they all followed.

* * *

They reached Suna at sunset. By dawn, Hinata was able to concoct and administer an antidote to Kankuro's poisoning.

"He's still in danger, though," she told them softly. "The poison's fighting back—I will need to watch him for the next few days."

"The rest of us need to head out. We're wasting our time here."

"We need a medic-nin," Asuma responded lowly to Kakashi's looming, thunderous presence by the window sill. " _You_ might comfortable fighting without one, but the rest of us can't just step into battle against the Akatsuki without a healer."

"We have one," Sai pointed out politely. "Sakura-san has learned how to treat battle wounds in combat situations specifically."

"Truly?" Gai boomed, eyes wide in wonder. "The presence of such vital youth really does bring tears to these eyes!"

"She has?" Asuma responded, looking confused.

"Yes," Sakura said, "Tsunade-sama taught me herself." She glared at Kakashi (or more accurately, _around_ him, she still couldn't quite make eye contact). Would he deny it? Did he think Naruto and Sai's training wounds had been healed by some anonymous, benevolent benefactor?

"She's a lousy fighter," Kakashi said coldly. "We keep her to the back."

Sakura's shoulders tightened with the strain of restraining herself. A hand landed on her shoulder, and she straightened, blinking as she looked back at Naruto.

"Team 7 and Team 10 will track the Akatsuki to where they're keeping the kazakage," Kakashi commanded. "Team Guy and the kazekage's sister will watch the boundary of the villages, in case the current weakness of the Hidden Sand should be revealed."

The respective teams nodded, accepting their roles without argument.

"What Kankuro managed," Asuma murmured, handing forward a scrap of black cloth.

A wolf-dog with sharp teeth appeared in a burst of smoke, summoned by the copy-nin. With hungry eyes, it stalked toward the torn fragment of a mask and inhaled.

Sakura along with the rest of her team and Team 10 raced to keep pace when it darted. They were quickly out the hospital doors and soon under the blazing, desert sun. Travelling in Suna was harder than in Konoha, what with the ever-shifting sand beneath their feet rather than solid ground.

Near midday, they began to reach thick settlements of trees and warm, red-brown dirt. On more familiar territory, their pace consequently picked up. But abruptly, just as they seemed to settle into the quicker cadence, the wolf-dog paused and made eye contact with its owner.

After a moment of silent communication, Kakashi stoically summoned another summon and signaled Team 10 to follow the smaller canine.

Sakura watched them depart with a narrowed gaze. When she turned back, she saw what Kakashi had already taken off, a speck in the distance.

Naruto cracked his neck and bent his knees, preparing to follow, but she stopped him with a hand to the shoulder.

"The Akatsuki are after jinchuruki, right?"

Naruto stiffened. Sai drew closer, eyes wide with interest.

"I don't care what Asuma or Kakashi said," she said gruffly, "You stay behind Sai _and_ me, got it?"

"But Sakura—"

"What she says is a valid strategy, dickless," Sai said indifferently. "Yes, Sakura-san is functionally our medic-nin today, but it also hardly makes sense to serve you up to them on a platter."

"But—"

"There is no literal platter, of course," Sai said pleasantly, "It's only a turn of phrase. Idiomatic."

"I _know_ that," Naruto huffed indignantly.

Sakura's hand tightened with bruising strength on Naruto's shoulder; he let out a grunt of pain. "No buts," she said pleasantly. Not willing to listen to any other protests, she leapt into the trees again. She heard Sai and Naruto follow behind her.

As it happened, they didn't end up travelling much farther. Sakura first saw the deceivingly relaxed expanse of Kakashi's back as he stood in an open space with few overhanging trees.

Then, she saw the second figure in front of him.

* * *

The first thought that came to mind when she saw Uchiha Itachi was not how much he looked like his younger brother, but that whoever had composed Itachi had done so with the notion of a shinobi as far from their mind as possible.

Calm, dark eyes peered thoughtfully at them from a pallid complexion, as though the man himself had never been built for the outdoors; the sensitive curve of his mouth and the long lines beneath his gaze would have seemed to profess to hours of introspection rather than physical training. He was neither tall nor short, neither slim nor broad. To Sakura, he looked more a poet or a philosopher than the weapon of destruction he was said to have become.

It was possible to see, in one instant, that this man was Sasuke's brother and that—also—he was worlds apart from the boy she had grown up with.

In the next instant, her gaze landed on the small, unassuming creature perched on his shoulder—unassuming, that is, except for the spinning sharingan that looked back at her, somehow both unreadable and mocking.

The crow, Sakura processed.

The Voice shifted restlessly in the back of her mind, a slumbering beast prodded awake by her panic. Clenching her fists, she forced herself to calm down. She had known for a long time now that Itachi was Shisui's other summoner. Now, the day had come that she and Itachi would stand on opposite sides of the battlefield. But whom the crow would fight for, she did not know.

Her frown deepened. If Shisui would abide by some sort of first-come-first-serve basis, of course, then she had already lost that battle…

"Sakura," Naruto muttered, voice strained, "that's—that's _him_. He's why Sasuke left. I can't…just stand back here and watch—"

If Itachi came for Naruto on Akatsuki's quest to extract all the tailed beasts, he would have to claw his way over her dead body.

"You can and you _will_ ," she answered darkly.

The man who was Uchiha Itachi surveyed them all with a cool, indifferent eyes. No killing intent radiated from him; he seemed for all the world like he had merely been contemplating the weather in this empty space of forest before they had stumbled upon him.

Then his gaze flashed to Kakashi, and his almond-shaped eyes narrowed a bit. It was the first, slight evidence of fracturing in the man's seeming impenetrable calm, but it was enough.

Now, Sakura knew that while Itachi thought very little of them, he was wary of the copy-nin.

Her eyes widened. There was….familiarity there.

"Nearly a decade has passed since I left, but I remember fighting under your command once," the man said dispassionately, confirming her suspicions. "You do remarkably well for a man with a borrowed eye. The Akatsuki would readily embrace your skill."

"It has been some years," Kakashi remarked coolly. "But you might remember Kino. You may also have heard that he recently…left."

Itachi was silent, dark eyes emotionless.

"I hunted him down. Killed him in front of his own son," the copy-nin said, vicious pleasure saturating his words. He cocked his head to the side, voice lowering a fraction. "Is there any witness you would like to request for yourself?"

Naruto made a noise behind her. Sai blinked impassively.

But Sakura paused because, suddenly, everything before her had ceased to make sense.

She _knew_ how Kakashi had been after he had killed Kino's son and Kino. This ostensible bloodthirstiness and sadism was ingenuine. It had to be. The realization was abrupt and devastating, though she didn't have the luxury to fully comprehend it now—

"You!" Naruto growled, "What have you done to him? _What have you done to Gaara!"_

"Quiet, Naruto," Sai said, warning bleeding into his normally bland voice.

Sakura caught a fraction of motion in her peripheral. She whipped her head around to catch Itachi's hand swiftly rise. Before he could complete the motion, Kakashi attacked.

"Don't look into his eyes," Sakura hissed to Naruto and Sai, well-aware of the sharingan's capabilities. She had more experience resisting the sharingan, but she knew it was best also to exercise caution.

"How can we know then—"

"Watch his feet and his body," Sai advised.

Sakura lips tightened as the fight between the two shinobi ensued. It was an odd feeling, to be in an altercation of this caliber—especially with Kakashi—and not be expected to fight at his side. It gave her the rare opportunity to survey him from a distance.

And Kakashi in combat was terrifying and…somehow disturbingly beautiful, though she was reluctant to admit that. Both participants twisted and lashed out with inhuman grace; it seemed almost choreographed, like they were taking turns in a deadly dance.

Then, abruptly, Kakashi pulled away.

Itachi blinked slowly in response.

Kakashi let out a foul curse and tilted his head up—as though listening to some distant sound or scenting something in the breeze. He stiffened. Then, his irritated gaze settled on Naruto, Sai, and her.

Naruto pushed against her restraining hand. "What's happening?" he asked unsurely.

"This is a convincing copy, not worth my time," Kakashi snarled. "The real one is likely guarding the kazekage."

"Save Gaara," Naruto demanded shakily.

Kakashi's body was a statue, he was so still.

"I have Kurama," the boy beside persuaded desperately. "We'll be able to hold out until you get back!"

Sakura watched the complex evolution of the content of the copy-nin's gaze with rapt attention. It was clear the moment he made his decision, though his frame was tense with repressed fury.

"No stupidity," he commanded coldly. Then, he disappeared with the next breeze.

Which left them standing in the sparsely covered expanse of forest with Itachi, alone.

Naruto tried to rush forward, no doubt to stand in front of them and play the rough-tough save-the-world type of idiot he was so often wont to do. Sakura grabbed him and hauled him back.

"Sakura—!"

"Not today, Naruto," she said, unblinking. She made a few, short hand signs and, in less than a second—before he had even known what hit him—Naruto was unconscious and on the ground with a dreamy smile on his lips.

Before Sai had the chance to process what had happened, she caught his chin in her hand and forced his eyes onto hers. Just as his gaze began to widen, his eyelids slid shut. He fell beside his teammate.

Then her gaze darted up and she made eye contact with Itachi. His expression did not betray any surprise, though she sensed that this was not what he had predicted.

Sakura inhaled and then exhaled. The sound seemed to thunder in her ears.

"I do not know you," the man commented distantly.

"I'm not surprised by that," she responded, standing in front of the unconscious bodies of her teammates.

"That was a foolish thing you did," he said disinterestedly. "The three of you would not have been enough to defeat me. You are…but an insect."

"So I've been hearing."

"Do you have a death wish?" he asked. The question was entirely absent of malice, merely curious.

She could feel the crow's heavy gaze on her.

"Is a shinobi a weapon for peace?" she asked instead. Part of her was incredulous at herself. What was she testing for? _Sanity_?

He stilled, and a wild hope surged in her chest. Then, his expression smoothed again. "The members of Akatsuki are teachers to the world of the true meaning of suffering, so that the world may finally turn away from warfare and conflict forevermore."

She gazed at the crow accusingly. It blinked back at her, placid.

What a joke, she thought, scoffing. Even if she was generous and believed that Itachi's ideals once, perhaps, may have been compelling and admirable, in the time since they had clearly become twisted. Akatsuki was no place for the sane.

"Ready?" she asked. She didn't really expect an answer.

* * *

A few minutes later, she had the small pleasure of seeing surprise flash through fake-Itachi's dark eyes as her fist drove through his midsection. It didn't feel like much of a victory, though.

It had almost felt… _too_ easy.

But then, she hadn't been fighting the actual man. The black cloaked figure slowly melted into the corpse of a former shinobi of the sand. Sakura frowned down at it. He had died fighting for his village, and then for his body to be so grossly misused without his consent— Her stomach turned.

She made the hand formations to wake the two figures behind her.

"I told you I would do it!" Naruto crowed once he stood, unaware that he had been unconscious at all. He pumped his fist in the air. "One rasengan was all it took!"

Sakura nodded, watching Sai closely. Her genjutsu had clearly worked on Naruto, leaving him with doctored memories of the fight. She wasn't so sure how the same had worked for Sai. For the moment, he said nothing.

The sound of an unnatural breeze gathering made them all tense. They relaxed slightly when they realized the form that appeared.

Over Kakashi's shoulder was an unconscious boy with red hair, dressed in the long robes of a hokage.

Naruto darted forward, blue eyes wide. "Is he—?"

"Barely." His gaze then passed over the corpse that had been Itachi. His sharingan gleamed with feral interest as he surveyed her teammate.

"All in a day's work," Naruto beamed back.

* * *

The journey back to Suna frustratingly seemed to take longer than the trip from there. Once back, she decided to have an early night in. Scraping sand from her skin, she soaked for a little in the bath in the corner of her small room. She hadn't had time to pack much, so she pulled on the same uniform she had been wearing before back onto her slightly-wet skin (it was hard to dry quickly when the air was so hot).

At first, she paced for a little, trying to work through her thoughts. Itachi, Itachi, Itachi—either the crow was a liar or it had been mistaken. There was no third option.

Eventually, however—when no clear conclusion emerged—she settled onto her bed and tried to force herself to sleep.

It didn't work.

Restless, she left the bed she had been given to open the window. The warm breeze caressed the locks of her hair, gently sending them away from the damp expanse of her neck.

Then, a loud banging on her door interrupted her momentary peace. Scowling, Sakura stormed toward the door and yanked it open.

She blinked dumbly up at the irreverent, cool gaze that looked straight past her to seemingly survey her room. After narrowing his eyes, the copy-nin reached wordlessly behind himself to shove someone else into her.

The figure in her arms groaned before straightening. "I really appreciate the sensitivity," the boy drawled, "Damaged goods and all, here, you know."

"Shikamaru," Sakura said blankly. A second later, her gaze fell to the wound in his side. She led him immediately to the table at the middle of the room, sweeping its contents onto the floor.

"Take it easy," the lanky boy hissed, catlike eyes narrowing. "God, why is everyone so pushy with the crippled today—"

"You're hardly crippled," Sakura said, tearing off the cloth obstructing her gaze from the wound. As she worked, her gaze flicked up to the cluster of individuals Kakashi had ostensibly brought to her room.

The man himself loomed in the corner of the room, as pleasant a presence as a poltergeist, watching her like he expected her to faint from the blood any moment. An unconscious body was draped over his shoulder—ostensibly why he had been forced to come in the first place.

"Just a bit of knitting up, not even beyond my limited skill," she said with saccharine sweetness. Then, the fake smile slid off her face. This was well within Hinata's capabilities. "Were there any complications with Kankuro?"

"The kazekage's brother is fine," Shikamaru said lazily. "Lee went and got himself impaled though. He and that Suna old lady are working on him."

"His injury is taking more time to heal than Hinata-sama initially thought," Neji explained calmly, still hovering near the door. He held his left arm gingerly. "She thought it best to send half of us here. Asuma-sensei, Tenten, and Kiba-san remain there."

Sakura cracked her knuckles. "This is going to sting. Try not to move."

Shikamaru gave a derisive laugh, cut off by a wince as her hand made contact. Sakura shut her eyes as she scoped out the wound with her chakra. Not dire, but there was some internal damage.

Steadily, she directed the flow of energy into sealing the wound. It was enough to get him into fighting-shape but there would be some discomfort, a consequence of working more quickly than she would have liked because of the line behind Shikamaru.

"You're good enough for now," Sakura said a few minutes later. "But you should spend the night in the infirmary in case there are any internal complications."

Shikamaru hummed uncaringly. "No need."

Her eyebrow arched. "I might not be a full-on medic-nin, but I'm not stupid enough to send you alone to your room to pass away quietly in your sleep."

"On the contrary, I don't think there's a more desirable method of dying," Shikamaru said idly. "The point is moot, however, as I won't be alone."

None of the shinobi in the room—certainly not the one passed out over Kakashi's shoulder, whose face Sakura still couldn't see—seemed to hear or care about this remark. Sakura, herself, was no different.

"Curious?" Shikamaru asked, an odd, sharp smile on his face.

"That will suffice, I suppose," she said, "And—no. I don't really care about who is or isn't your bed, Shikamaru."

She paused, evaluating that statement a little. "Unless it's either one of my parents," she corrected consideringly.

"Really?" he said, almost silently now. The words were only for her ears. His eyes were cool and measuring as he gazed at her. "Funnily enough, he seems to care about _you_. And Naruto. He tries to hide it, but he happens to be really, really bad at that—to those who look, at least."

Sakura froze, her hands gripping the end of the table she had been leaning on. _Sai_?

"And you've been looking a lot these days, I take it," she said coolly, voice equally low. "Did he _want_ me to know?"

"He wants you to know him," was the offered response, delivered so boredly one might have almost been fooled.

"And you know all this," Sakura said slowly, "because…?"

"I look." Equally nonchalant.

She surveyed him for a moment. Then she smiled just as pleasantly. "Well, that's just wonderful. And in case you ever try to forget how _wonderful_ , please remember all the hard work I just did."

"Which you can just as easily undo?" Shikamaru guessed.

Perhaps, if he had known exactly what 'work' Sakura had accomplished with her hands, he would have demonstrated more wariness than amusement.

"Precisely," she finished curtly.

Shikamaru exited the room with a lazy wave, leaving her with the three other occupants of her room.

"Neji-san," she prompted, trying to keep the latent irritation out of her voice. She had forgotten that also—how _annoying_ Shikamaru could be to talk to. No wonder he and Sai had drifted to each other.

The Hyuuga's face was unreadable.

Now, Sakura had trouble hiding her exasperation. What was he waiting for—an official summons? "You're next."

"You can address Yamanaka-san first," Neji said stiffly.

Sakura blinked first in incomprehension. Then her head snapped to the unconscious body tossed over Kakashi's shoulder.

"Put her down on the table."

A second later, Ino's unconscious body was on the table and her former carrier was back in his original corner of the room, gazing coldly back.

Sakura's fingers probed at the other girl's throat and then along her pressure points. There were no injuries—at least, none that she could find visually.

"How long has she been like this?"

"Since the end of the battle," Neji answered, an odd quality to his voice. "Shortly after using the mind transfer jutsu."

Ah. She drew her hand back and delivered a resounding slap across Ino's face.

The blonde girl surged up like a corpse rising from the dead, a truly dramatic, wheezing gasp emerging as well that soon transitioned into a short series of sneezes.

" _Bitch_ ," she complained. "What the hell was that?"

"Catharsis," Sakura muttered. Clearing her throat, she said, "I imagine Hinata was just too kind to do this herself. You're good to go."

Ino grumbled a few more times, rubbing her red cheek.

"I have a broken arm to fix," Sakura pressed blandly.

Ino's blue gaze went to the figure behind her. Sighing dramatically, she stood up. Before she left, however, something strange flickered through her expression as her eyes settled on Sakura one last time—was it sorrow? Sakura's throat became strangely dry.

But then, as though the look had never existed, the odd expression disappeared, and Ino smiled prettily.

"A beauty needs her beauty rest," she said primly, before stalking out, a long, rippling stream of blonde hair following her. "Later, forehead."

Sakura watched silently for a moment, watching the back disappear behind the door. She turned to face her final patient.

"You," Sakura said impatiently, pointing at Neji.

With a smooth, swift grace that spoke of a very particular sort upbringing, the Hyuuga settled serenely on the table, holding his injured arm aloft in front of him.

She prodded at it as considerately as she could; unfortunately, his winces were necessary to determining how clean the break had been.

Her examination revealed that it was a messy one. She frowned. Applying chakra, the jagged breaks in the formerly smooth bone began to close. She knew the other boy tried to hold himself as still as he could, but it was a painful, draining process, and he began to shake.

"You need to be still," Sakura warned.

"I—" Neji said stiltedly, "am trying."

Sakura didn't look up, but her jaw clenched as she directed her words to the figure in the corner of the room. "Hold him still."

When Neji continued to tremble, unaided by any other force, Sakura's head snapped up, seething.

"What are you waiting for?" she snarled, forgetting herself.

The copy-nin surveyed her coolly for a moment. Then, without a single word, he sauntered to the table and placed one, long-fingered hand firmly on Neji's shoulder.

The color drained from the boy's face. Sakura couldn't tell if it was fear or pain. Probably pain, she decided.

Sakura pressed on, watching Neji's face warily. To heal him as quickly as she was, she was drawing in part on his energy as well. Unfortunately, that meant he was likely to pass out at any moment.

"My vision is going black," the Hyuuga said lightly.

"That's to be expected," Sakura returned with some bluntness.

"Some forewarning would have been appreciated—" Neji slumped over before he could finish the words.

"Hold him up," Sakura said stiffly, trying her best to avoid Kakashi's presence in every other regard. She didn't look up to see his reaction, but Neji's body was propped up as she finished healing him.

At last, she pulled her hands away and straightened. "Done," she announced—perhaps, redundantly, but she felt the sudden need to break the silence.

But scarcely a second later, she found out that something else would have broken the silence for her. She only had a brief moment to prepare herself, before the door crashed onto the ground with a loud thud, denting the clay floor so that particles of red drifted upward in a small cloud.

It was the lady who had been helping Hinata, Sakura identified immediatly. Only, that had not been the entrance of an ally, but someone with rather hostile inclinations. Not thinking twice, she grabbed Neji by the collar and tossed him onto the bed behind her and Kakashi.

Her hand immediately went for the kunai on her leg holsters, only to find when she looked back up that she was staring at a back. Kakashi's back.

Sakura's gaze brushed the ends of his hair, cut messily above the pale column of his neck.

"Copy-nin," the woman croaked, her voice hoarse.

"Lady Chiyo." Sakura couldn't see his face, but she could guess what he looked like by the way his head was tilted. She'd faced it one too many times, that infuriating look that was simultaneously disinterested and somehow relentlessly predatory.

"Konoha's _dogs_ have always been a plague on my family," the older woman said softly. She folded her hands neatly in front of her, straightening to her full height—which was not much, but her presence seemed to expand to fill the room. "I shouldn't even be surprised, should I?"

Sakura shifted to the right. She was tall enough to just see her over Kakashi's shoulder, but not tall enough to have a comfortable view.

She only had a second to look—to take in the creased face, the dark eyes, and silver hair—before her vision was blocked again. Blinking, Sakura gaped once more at the back in front of her once more.

"Your protégé, I assume," Chiyo demanded, cold.

"A nuisance inflicted on me by the hokage," Kakashi said coolly, a grating disdain in his voice. "Have to obey certain rules, you see, or I'll get in trouble for the others I…accidentally break. Getting more to the point: are you here to kill me, Lady Chiyo, for killing your traitor grandson?"

A choked, stifled noise echoed through the room, before the woman's voice emerged harder than before.

"Have you no shame, boy?"

"It was the Akatsuki that attacked your kage," Kakashi said uncaringly. "Sasori is Akatsuki. I certainly don't make it a habit to make myself easy prey for the sake of individuals such as yourself: the self-delusional."

"The White Fang took my son and his wife," Chiyo said slowly, deadly, "And now— _you._ You've taken my grandson from me. I don't think it's a coincidence, copy-nin, that the others got away and that he alone is dead. You _hunted_ him, didn't you? Like the dog you are. Like your father was."

Sakura watched as Kakashi's shoulders curved just slightly—just infinitesimally. But she understood, in that minute change, that something had shifted. His killing intent had been an insidious, thrumming presence the moment Chiyo had entered the room; now, it had grown into its full-fledged form, making it difficult to breathe, let alone move.

Sakura gritted her teeth against it. The White Fang. She had heard the name before—she hadn't known he was Kakashi's father. Now that she thought about it, she'd never even considered whether or not the copy-nin had parents.

"Did you even give Sasori a chance?" Chiyo asked, voice strained; Sakura could finally hear the grief in her voice, the pain desperately trying to be hidden. "Did you even _try_ to—to resolve the conflict some other way? To talk him down?"

Kakashi didn't answer her questions. Instead, he watched her silently. More than ever, Sakura wished she could see his face. Was his silence admission? Or had Sasori been like Kaido—

"Of course you didn't. You've surpassed even your father in your bloodshed," the old woman snarled.

Sakura heard a deep, slow inhale, before the following words.

"At least _he_ had the good sense to kill himself."

Sakura's mouth flattened. Whatever her personal qualms with the copy-nin, that had crossed a line. She expected Kakashi to erupt any moment now. She had no idea what to do—stop him? Fight Chiyo?

Of course, Kakashi found it suitable now to defy expectations.

"Leave," the copy-nin said, voice deathly soft.

Both Chiyo and Sakura gaped at him in shock. The older woman recovered first. Her face contorted as she took a short step forward. "You fool, you think—"

"You're acting in grief," Kakashi cut her off, turning to glance at the window. Sakura could see his profile, now. He looked like stone. "You should know better."

The older woman physically recoiled from him like she'd been slapped.

"Your kage is weak, if you may recall," he continued lowly, emotionless. "You bring war on your village, and it will be slaughter."

The small woman stared at him for a long time, eyes dark and beady.

"Bide my time—is it?" she sighed finally. She gave an unpleasant smile. "You must know, son of the White Fang, that you had a better chance of surviving now than you will against my poison in the future."

"Do I," he voiced indifferently.

"Until that day," Lady Chiyo said, acting as though she hadn't heard his words. She gave a shallow bow, before departing the room as abruptly as she had entered it.

For a long time, both she and Kakashi remained exactly as they were, silent. Sakura was still processing what had happened—or rather, what _hadn't_ happened.

Because: how could someone so… _incendiary_ as the copy-nin tolerate words like that? Was it Chiyo's age? Sakura doubted it; she had seen Kakashi kill older. Had it been that she was a woman? That was even more ridiculous to contemplate, because for all his flaws (and there were many), Kakashi had never been a chauvinist.

He believed Sakura to be a silly, frivolous girl, but that had less so to do with her being a girl and more to do with believing her to be…well, an utterly useless shinobi.

As this thought crossed her mind, Sakura's mood took a sharp downturn again.

"Good night, Kakashi-sensei." _Get out_ , she thought.

He gaze latched onto her with sudden intensity, like he had forgotten she was even there. Sakura tried to maintain the smile on her face.

His head snapped away dismissively, and he took a step. But there was something odd about that step, a bizarre swaying—

Sakura's eyes fell on a small scratch she had missed earlier on his upper arm, almost entirely unnoticeable. Hardly a millimeter in width, that was all his opponent had been able to get. But it was enough: the scratch was raised and an unusual color.

"The blade that grazed you there. It was poisoned."

He paid her no attention, moving straight towards the door as thought that moment of instability had only been imagined.

"You're breaking the poison in your system down with your chakra, aren't you?" she guessed, eyes narrow. She straightened to her full height. "You're draining yourself unnecessarily."

He paused finally, turning toward her. His jaw could have cut through diamond with how tightly it was clenched.

"You saw me heal them," she said stiffly, hating that she had to do this—to _persuade_ him to let her heal him. Given the chance, she would have let him walk; if only there would be no consequences for such a decision. "Hinata's the expert, but I can do the job good enough."

His eyelids lowered to half-mast as he contemplated her. In that moment, Sakura felt like an insect pinned beneath a magnifying glass.

"It's up to you," she muttered. "You can travel and fight at full strength tomorrow. Or at diminished. To each their own, I suppose."

Sakura was almost entirely certain that he would have hit her then, if he could have mustered the act, that is. Instead, he settled for glowering at her, the full force of his ire conveyed through the rapidly spinning sharingan.

"Onto the table," she gestured, mostly to be annoying.

He didn't shift an inch. Instead, his head rotated carelessly to face the window again.

Because he wasn't looking, Sakura allowed her face to become something truly fearsome.

"Your shirt needs to be off," she said through clenched teeth.

It was like Kakashi couldn't hear her. Or, alternatively—that something _truly_ fascinating was happening outside the window that consumed all his attention. Just to double check, Sakura glanced quickly.

Nothing but night sky.

Stalking forward, she grabbed ahold of Kakashi's flak jacket—making sure to knot her fingers into the black cloth of the shirt beneath too—and rent the layers of clothing in two.

A guttural snarl emerged from somewhere deep in the copy-nin's throat, his head shifting with lightning quickness. Sakura didn't flinch, even when his face ended up a scarce few inches from hers.

"I need to track how far the poison has spread," she explained stiffly.

His shoulders were hunched inward, like he intended to intimidate her with his larger size. Sakura would have sneered, if her attention hadn't turned immediately to the task at hand.

She cracked her fingers before flexing them, lit with green chakra. She surveyed the entry point of the poison and then shifted her fingers through a short sequence of jutsus. A second later, the expanse of pale, scarred skin was lit by an intersection of glowing lines, where the poison coated his veins.

The glow was admittedly faint; Kakashi's chakra was doing a good job of breaking it down through brute force.

She concentrated the next ten minutes on drawing the poison out, vein by vein, depositing the blue, viscous fluid into the potted plant in the corner of the room.

But sometimes, every few seconds, she would get _distracted_ —

Distracted by, that is…

She was trying her best, she reflected bitterly. To _ignore it_. But increasingly, it was becoming impossible to.

It was—nothing. And simultaneously, everything. The smell of him: smoke, metal, pine, and— The heat of him, his skin almost feverish every time her finger tips glanced it. The lean, scarred expanse of his flesh gleaming in the dim lighting.

It had all meant nothing to her, until the point when it abruptly did.

And now, now Sakura _wanted_ him. She resented him, wanted to stab him several times, and also—apparently, now—to fuck him. What a devastating, soul-crushing development.

Sakura couldn't exactly skirt around it anymore. Not when she was trying so determinedly hard to suppress it. God knew what he could smell on her already, from her previous activities—but she was determined to finish her work before he could smell this.

"Done," she said a little too loudly.

He disappeared before her tongue had even curled to make the 'n,' taking Neji unsconscious body with him.

Sakura cursed loudly and collapsed flat on her back onto the bed. Then, after a moment of hateful consideration, her hand left its former position at the edge of the bed to move somewhere else.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** SO sorry for the long wait! I had to go through finals rip :( But IM BACK NOW! Thank you so, so, so much for all the wonderful comments. I am determined to update more regularly this summer, so sustain me with all your amazing thoughts/feedback!

Also don't worry, I know we didn't get to see a _ton_ of Itachi this chapter, but we will definitely see more of him in the future!

On another note, I'm sort of high key considering starting a Sakura/Sasuke fanfic? Let me know what you think / if you'd read it lol.

Yet another note: also, I'm considering starting a fic of one shots with unexpected Naruto pairings-also let me know if you would read this / what pairings or scenarios you would want to see.

Kk, that's all I have for now. Until next time!


	15. Chapter 15: La Petite Mort

Two trees away, Snail sat perched on a tree in a bright red kimono. Nestled between her thighs was a small mirror, which she peered down at to line her eyes and paint her lips.

Between every exchange for another makeup tool, she directed a very discreet glance Sakura's way.

Hyena was sharpening her tanto against a rock a few meters away. Sakura could sense her cool attention on her as well, well-hidden by the curtain of her black hair.

Raccoon was slightly more polite about it, Sakura appreciated wryly. He had turned the opposite way as he slipped on his purple hakama, though he glanced at her occasionally as well through her reflection in the nearby river.

"So what happened?" a low voice demanded a scarce foot from her.

All three figures' heads jerked up.

Sakura finished tying her obi, then met the brown-haired man's equally unabashed nosiness with a narrow glare. Her mask was down, like Raccoon's and Snail's; Bear looked at these features, unimpressed.

"Everyone here's wondering, alright? I'm just the only one with the balls to pursue the issue. I mean, we didn't _really_ think he'd kill you when he called you outside the bar, but—"

"Crow, I think you tied your obi incorrectly," Snail interrupted abruptly.

Sakura glanced down at the obi with the sort of familiarity one normally directed toward foreign animals only glimpsed in rare scrolls.

"Does it matter?" Bear drawled. "It's not like anyone's going to look at her with you there."

He said it like Sakura was meant to take offense, but it _was_ rather the point. Sakura and Raccoon had been chosen for their respective roles precisely to make Snail stand out. And Snail was, without question, very pretty (or, the face she wore for ANBU missions was). Being petite, with a soft, tremulous voice and a certain air of innocence—almost certainly false, given what the shinobi did in her day to day—lent her an easy transition to her assigned role on this particular mission.

Snail slipped down from the tree, kimono fluttering in the wind as she descended. She reached Sakura and firmly took grasp of her obi, fixing it quickly.

"Done?" Hyena spoke finally, sliding her tanto back into its sheathe.

"Just a minute," Snail responded. Sakura felt the cool sensation of the red liquid on the older woman's lips being applied to her own with a steady hand. After, she grasped the thin hair on Sakura's head and knotted it loosely at the top of her head, sliding a hair comb to hold it in place.

"Get moving."

Sakura kept her limbs loose with great effort at the sound of this new voice. She looked up from beneath her lashes.

Kakashi stood as tall as ever, but his skin had abandoned its pale cast in favor of something closer to the color of sand. Other than that—and the fact that his eyes were amber and his hair black—his face and build remained largely unchanged.

Of course, the others probably didn't have any point of comparison. But if the copy-nin remembered that she had seen him unmasked (or anything from that day at all, for that matter), he did a remarkable job of hiding it.

Bear hastily took his place atop the horse tied to the carriage, complaining beneath his breath about the animal's smell. After a brief pause, Sakura, Raccoon, and Snail made their way into the modest vehicle. Hyena gave a nod their way and then disappeared into the trees.

Kakashi tracked her progress before entering the rickety carriage as well, sliding into place beside Snail. Sakura thanked the heavens that it was Racoon beside her, and not him. She gazed studiously out the window.

"Move," Kakashi demanded curtly. Bear lifted the reigns and prompted the horse into motion. The carriage made a concerning creaking noise before following.

"You have the drug?"

"Yes, taichou," Snail answered.

"When he's unclothed, inject it into the femoral vein. The aphrodisiac-sedative combination should keep him occupied for thirty minutes maximum."

"I understand."

"It's critical that he believes a sexual encounter transpired and that our 'visit' goes unnoticed," Kakashi continued stoically.

"Understood, taichou."

Sakura knew from Tsunade that drugs like the one Snail was carrying were exceptionally precious. Villages had to keep their use of such compounds discreet, as they left traces that could easily be deconstructed and analyzed given the slightest suspicion. If discovered, targets could build immunity years of work and research became abruptly useless.

Sakura's gaze fell unbidden on the copy-nin. Like many other villages' special ops, there were branches of ANBU that engaged in actual seduction. Kakashi's team was not one of them—hence the seduction drug.

Was this mission, like the previous, meant to end in a bloodbath too, she wondered idly. Was that why their team had been chosen?

She couldn't rule out the possibility for sure. In an unusual turn of events, everyone had been informed of their roles for this mission and just that. The target of the drug, indeed, seemed to be only one minor step in a multi-layered, complex plan that only Kakashi knew the entirety of.

Which was fine with her. It was an odd mission when Sakura didn't have to kill someone.

 _Boring, you mean_ , the Voice offered.

Sakura gazed peacefully out the carriage.

* * *

Almost a full day later, they reached the sedate, unassuming establishment they had been searching for. After a brief conversation with the owner—and after a few coins changed hands—they were allowed to enter and to display their 'wares' among the private rooms. They struck gold on the third.

Seated in front of them on a tatami mat, Hachiro—their target—sipped his sake indifferently along with his fellow accountants.

From her demure position, Sakura could see that the copy-nin's shoulders were slumped and his back slightly curved, making him seem far less aggressive than usual. His voice, when he spoke, was a carefully modulated tenor, higher and smoother than usual.

"So fine a group, and yet so lacking in…suitable entertainment. Please, allow me to present to you my finest."

It was a silkiness she had never heard before. Sakura detested it.

At the sounds of jeers, Snail stepped in front of Sakura and Raccoon, curtsying. The shoulder of her kimono slid down and revealed a naked shoulder.

Hachiro was a handsome man, which didn't bode especially well; he might turn them away altogether if his libido was satiated sufficiently elsewhere. But the man beside Hachiro nudged him, a slightly fearful smile on his lips. "Hachiro-san, you work so hard. Perhaps, one of them may help you…relax."

Hachiro tilted his head, seeming unconcerned by this.

"Gods!" another man laughed riotously, clearly drunk. He swayed, even seated. "Such a tight ass."

The first man's eyes widened in panic.

"By all means," Hachiro sipped his sake casually. "If you don't like your job, I can easily relieve you of it."

The drunk man seemed to abruptly sober. "H-Hachiro-san, don't take what I said the wrong way," the man laughed nervously. "I-In fact! Tonight will be on me! Pick any one of them, I'll pay for it."

Hachiro smiled unfeelingly. "No matter the price?"

The man swallowed with ostensible difficulty. "Any…one." Clearly, he was willing to take a blow to keep his job.

"What was your name again?"

"Nazako, at your service, sir," Kakashi said, bowing smoothly.

"Who is your most expensive whore, Nazako?" Hachiro asked lazily, sipping his wine.

"Why, let me introduce you," Kakashi answered, voice like velvet.

As soon as Snail was within reach of Kakashi, he wrapped his arm around her midsection and spun her around. His forearm pressed right into her ribcage right beneath her breasts, unmistakably bolstering them to make them more prominent.

His other hand moved swiftly up to grasp her chin and tilt her head to the side, displaying the long line of her neck.

Sakura's lips tightened darkly at the sight, before she gathered the wherewithal to avert her gaze to the floor meekly.

"This is Odori," Kakashi said with a slow, indulgent smile. "Odori-chan is unmistakably the best I can offer. She comes with _superlative_ reviews."

He delivered the words hotly against Snail's cheek.

Kakashi pushed her forward, and she moved swiftly to kneel by Hachiro's side, resting her head against his chest. The act was deceptively innocuous, for in doing so and leaning slightly forward, she slyly allowed him a good look down the gaps of her loosely tied kimono.

He didn't look.

"How much is she?"

Kakashi's gaze shifted between them with the pretense of calculation, before listing an obscenely high price. The man who had offered to pay looked like he might keel over.

"I'll take that one," Hachiro said. "For the price you just stated."

Sakura heard only silence in response to this proclamation. She lifted her head just slightly. Her gaze landed first on a finger pointed in her direction. Then, it moved to the owner of that finger.

She blinked incredulously at it. Her eyes darted to Kakashi.

He wasn't looking at her. He was staring, with exceptional stillness, at Hachiro.

"What!" the man cried out, looking on the verge on tears at this prospect. "She isn't even pretty!"

"Didn't you know?" Hachiro said lightly. "It's the whores that are unremarkable that work harder to make a living. I only want to get my money's worth, Akiro-san. Forgive me, I misspoke— _your_ money's worth."

Sakura's mouth twisted with incredulity.

Without a further glance, the accountant gestured for 'Odori' to move away from him. Snail stood up with a ferocious pout. As she turned to stomp her way to Kakashi, the panic in her eyes was clear.

Sakura stared at him hard as well, trying to find some silent signal as to what she should do. Would they attempt to move the drug from Snail's person to her person? She knew it was probably too risky, could possibly jeopardize the whole thing, but—

But when she looked at him, Kakashi genuinely appeared uncaring about this outcome, even bored. It was only when Hachiro's attention went to him again that the copy-nin's expression changed, suddenly becoming animated with a greedy smile that befitted his character.

Sakura's lips tightened. She read the message loud and clear. It seemed that this was no longer the copy-nin's—or Snail's—problem but hers. Oh yes, the mighty Kakashi probably had _infinitely_ more important aspects of this mission to address.

Raccoon's hiss beside her jolted her into motion. She stood up swiftly, perhaps a little more swiftly than a civilian should have, and walked over to the man.

He stood up as well.

"Akiro, I'll leave you to take care of payment," Hachiro smiled. He placed a few coins onto the table. "For the drink and the mediocre shamisen." The geisha behind him flinched.

As she and the man crossed the room to exit, Sakura flicked a glance to her captain, jaw clenched.

His back faced her as he casually negotiated with Akiro for payment.

* * *

The most immediate issue, Sakura decided calmly, was that she did not have the drug.

No, the sole vial was contained somewhere on Snail's person—which would go entirely unperturbed tonight. She was beginning to theorize that she possibly had murdered an innocent orphan in a previous life; how else could she have earned herself laughably horrible luck in _this_ one?

Snail had been the most likely choice for the whore picked tonight, if at all (they had known from intel Hachiro preferred women to men). Placing the one available dose on her had been the smartest choice. And yet—here she was.

The rickshaw slowed to a stop. A second later, the runner stepped forward to help her down. She heard Hachiro step down lightly behind her.

Genjutsu was the only feasible option. She had a seeming advantage in the fact that he didn't _seem_ suspicious of her; but then, his face was a remarkable study in marble for the most part.

A male servant greeted them at the door.

"Take her to the bedroom and draw a bath."

The servant bowed low and then directed Sakura up a staircase to a relatively austere master bedroom. It contained the bare minimum—a large mattress, bedecked by simple, unremarkable sheets and cushions. A similarly unremarkable dresser lined one wall, with a modest, serviceable mirror. Window-doors on the opposite side opened up onto a small balcony.

The bedroom was separated by no more obstacle than a curtain from the bathroom. When the servant finished drawing the curtain back, Sakura's gaze found the white, porcelain tub at its center. He filled it with steaming water, tendrils of steam floating toward the ceiling.

"Undress," the servant said, as he rotated the valves shut.

Sakura pretended she hadn't heard, continuing to survey the steam idly. The servant left the room.

As she heard footsteps approach the door, she seated herself on the bed. When Hachiro at last entered, he cast her a nonchalant glance before removing his hakama. Without a word, he slid into the tub and leaned his head against the porcelain edge.

Sakura watched him closely. Had he forgotten about her, she wondered. Perhaps, he had simply intended to purchase her time using Akiro's money without touching her at all.

For a long moment, she thought the man had decided exactly that. Then, slowly, his head tilted upwards.

His gaze passed over body—slow and deliberate. He stood and rivulets of water streamed down the expanse of his body and onto the cold floor. He moved forward, a slow, sedate pace to his steps.

As his path neared the side of the room with the dresser, Sakura moved as well. It was more the unexpected nature of the act than the use of much strength on her part that made Hachiro take a step back as she collided with him. As she had mostly expected, he responded with force. She felt hands grasp almost at her waist, and then her back was shoved hard—hard enough to leave concerning bruises on a civilian—against the dresser in retaliation.

Sakura let out a small cry, expressing of pain she had long ceased becoming susceptible to.

"I wanted to touch you," she explained, voice weak. To control his hands so he wouldn't detect her telling musculature.

"You try something like that again, and I'll give you to the servant outside and anyone who passes by this house until dawn. Understood?" he said coolly.

Sakura's temper flared. Outwardly, she nodded and shrank back against the dresser.

His hands latched onto the sides of her cheap kimono and pulled, ripping the material. Her fists tightened instinctively as his cold hands met the surface of her flesh. She hid the action with a gasp that caused his eyes to flicker in annoyance.

As he palmed her breasts, his teeth glanced a vulnerable part of Sakura's neck that—in any other situation—would have made her tear his throat out. With her teeth.

Instead, however, relegated to the role she was tonight, Sakura clenched her teeth and gave a low, strangled moan, throwing her head back.

When she opened her eyes again, she made eye contact with Kakashi.

* * *

Her head snapped back up with painful quickness. The apparition did not disappear.

There he was, completely visible through the double doors-windows that led to the balcony. Kakashi had removed the henge and wore his mask again. His posture, she noticed, was relaxed as he leaned against the railing of the balcony.

Hachiro did not cease his rough handling of her body, but Sakura had become all but numb to it. Her body was cold, almost sensationless, as she examined the figment outside the window.

It was dark outside, but somehow she could see his eyes with unerring clarity. The crimson-vermillion red of the sharingan and brooding charcoal of his regular eye told a different story.

Despite his relaxed posture, Kakashi's gaze was savage and intent on her.

Hands gripped her knees and wrested them apart. Sakura's face contorted into a snarl, forgetting 'who' and where she was. She regained control of her expression just in time as Hachiro's eyes passed over her face. His hand moved simultaneously to slide between her thighs.

Moving quickly, Sakura tangled one hand in Hachiro's hair—holding his head firmly in place so that he could not look behind him; with the other, she made the signs for the one-handed genjutsu.

His eyes slid shut and he crumpled toward the floor. Before he could fall completely, she picked him up with one hand on his collar and tossed him onto the bed. Hair fell into her eyes with the motion. An object entered the peripheral of her vision. Her hand snapped out, snatching the incoming object out of the air. She turned it over. It was her hair comb.

Her head slowly moved up from her open palm. Kakashi now stood inside the bedroom with her.

Stoically, she grabbed the damaged halves of her kimono and pulled them together. After a moment, she paused, eyes narrowing. Her obi was strewn on the ground barely a meter from her. She looked up to examine the room's only other conscious occupant.

She didn't know what possessed her to do it. Madness, possibly. (Probably).

"Pick it up," she commanded.

Sakura couldn't see Kakashi's face, as it was cast in the shadows. But his eyes glowed—with something ineffable and dangerous—as he surveyed her. And then, as her own eyes lowered in a blink, he became a blur of motion.

By the time her lashes had lifted again, he was down on one knee, his head was level with her knees as she perched on the dresser still. His head was cocked to the side, his nostrils flared, as his fingers grazed over the white obi.

Sakura yanked her chin up and raised her hand, palm open in wordless demand.

Kakashi's mismatched eyes burned into her from his position, unmoving. The clouds must have shifted, because abruptly, light was cast into the room again from the moon. It lit half his face. But the half she saw was enough to make her still. There was insanity on the visible half of his face, a barely restrained _something_ that had her mouth twisting.

"Give it," she whispered, the words harsh in the utter quiet.

His head was still tilted, his eyes still burning into in that peculiar, scalding manner, as his hand lifted slowly—a mockery of his earlier speed. The heavy material of the obi made a sibilant noise as it slid from the floor.

Sakura watched its progression with determined focus. She was immediately aware, therefore, when the copy-nin's hand stopped again, barely above her knee.

His hand hovered there, the heat from his radiating from his palm and making the hair on Sakura's leg rise.

Kakashi's face was half obscured by the black mask, but when her eyes darted to him, she knew what he was going to say before he had even said it.

Shock made her numb. Dust particles that had had floated through the air, steadily, gradually, stopped their natural trajectory. The whistle of the wind through the trees dissipated into sudden, deathly silence.

"I want you."

The dresser shook suddenly with the force of both the copy-nin's palms settling on it, framing her body. He looked deranged by the confession, like he would have liked nothing more than to make it untrue.

And, abruptly, Sakura came back to herself.

His eyes were half-lidded, feral, as he peered up at her from between her legs. "I want to fuck you." Her ears burned.

"Find an oiran," she snapped.

"I did," he spat back.

A humorless laugh bubbled up. Was _that_ what she had been for? But she felt the seemingly ever-present knot now between her legs _clench,_ so exquisitely, painfully tight.

She watched his hands spasm on either side of her, his nails digging long cracks into the marble surface of the dresser.

"I don't feel the same," she tried, attempting to sound indifferent.

But she knew her fingers trembled too much, frenetic and uncontrollable, like an addict long deprived. Sakura watched as his nostrils flared, and he looked up at her, gaze terrible and _knowing_.

"I can smell you," he said, voice a rasp. For one, devastating second, his hot gaze flickered toward that part between her legs, which was undeniably _wet_.

Her shoulders trembled violently. "So?" she told him coldly.

His eyelids slid down further. "Let me touch you," he whispered, gaze simultaneously livid and hungry.

The last of Sakura's cool control snapped. Her hands knotted in the hair at the back of his neck, but it didn't feel so much that she was pulling him up as her hands were following his motion upward. In an instant, the eyes that had drilled into her from below were level with her. His palms, coarse, rough, and _blazing_ with unnatural heat settled on the tensed muscle of her thighs.

"You want to touch me?" she hissed. " _Touch me._ "

His eyes flashed with victory.

And then hands slid up her legs with lightning quickness, electrifying the skin, muscle, and tissue there. He flicked aside her kimono with disparagement, like it was contemptible for obstructing him. And then, he cupped her, the weight and heat of his palm against her a fatal blow.

She felt like she was on fire, like she was liable to become ash at any moment.

The moment his fingers drove into her, Sakura's head crashed into the mirror's dresser, shattering it. Glass shards fell over both her and him, as ecstasy stole words—all semblance of language—momentarily from her. She grasped at his shoulders with bruising strength, and _he took it_ , eyes dark, wild with equal greediness.

The roughness of the skin on his hands felt glorious inside her, the width of his knuckles spreading and twisting wrecking her with how terrifyingly well he fit, how almost-perfectly _filled_ she felt at last.

His fingers curled, and Sakura's mouth fell open in a soundless gasp, a mere breath of air exhaled.

The world consisted only of that hot, desperate space between her legs and his fingers. And then—the iron heat of cock pressing urgently against her. Her gaze flicked down to it, rapt, then back up to his face.

The copy-nin's face was a beautiful painting of both insatiability and starvation, the tension in his jaw visible even through the black mask. Sakura's hands snapped to his hips and dragged him hard against her, cradling him—his _cock_ , she thought, and a new rush of heat flooded her core—between her thighs.

She watched him, heady with—she didn't know what it was. An odd sense of power, perhaps. And also, a keen knowledge that—

She locked her legs behind his back, possessive and also half-wondrous. And, like that, Kakashi's face was suddenly in front of hers, his ragged breath a hot caress against her lips. For a long moment, Sakura glared at him, and he glared back at her equally resentfully.

Then, his mask was gone, and his mouth was on hers, filthy and dirty and harsh, as his tongue dragged forcefully against her own.

The full force of his body was driving her against the dresser as he rutted against her, his snarls swallowed by Sakura's mouth. His fingers, belying the savagery of his mouth, were calamitously deft inside her, manipulating that particular spot in her to the point of madness—her madness. And Sakura felt like she was dying—the most terrible, hateful death possible because it seemed both so thunderous and terribly _sweet_ , and she wanted it so, so badly. Her only consolation was that there was equal desperation on his face, in the dangerous tightness of his jaw, in the strained veins of his neck and arms, in the hardness of his cock.

" _Look at me,_ " he growled into her ear, his newly revealed mouth—firm and sensuous—hot on her.

Sakura suddenly felt like she couldn't direct her gaze anywhere else.

"Look at me," he repeated again even though she already had, and he _knew it._ She saw white as she came, gaze blindly locked on his. Dimly, she felt the body rutting against abruptly still, tight against her. Possibly, he said something. Possibly, he was entirely silent. She was deaf to the world and didn't know.

He left immediately; the loss of his lips first, his fingers a second later; the double door windows parted and shut soundlessly, and _Sakura didn't really care._

Disbelieving of what had transpired, she left the dresser and staggered toward the bed. She settled on it, cheeks red, marks trailing from her neck and down, and smelling like sex. This, ironically, could only aid her whenever Hachiro woke up.

But Sakura didn't have it in her to be grateful right now.

She was _livid—_ at herself, at Kakashi, at the fucking _ceiling_ above that had seen it all.

So she had known before this how regrettably undiscerning her libido was—she cringed just thinking about it— _fine._ But she had never, ever intended to act on it. Her body was supposed to defer to her mind, which very, very strongly maintained a decided stance of antagonism toward the individual she had just—

It had clearly been a lapse of judgement for the both of them. At this acknowledgement, she began to calm down. Neither of them had touched each other just now because they _liked_ each other. This had just been…a shared momentary lapse in judgement, and it would never be repeated.

Perhaps, even, this had been a necessary evil in order to purge herself of that misdirected lust. Now, she would be able to pretend this all had never happened.

Sakura settled back against the pillows and waited for Hachiro to wake up.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Soooooo :o Yep. I know I wasn't being very coy with chapter title, but...that happened :D Please let me know what you think and continue leaving me all those wonderful, delicious comments / kudos!

P.S. In an unprecedented turn of events, I actually almost have the next chapter ready to go!

P.P.S. Ummm I don't really watch Boruto, but this popped up on youtube in my recs and Sakura here ( watch?v=XJYgh5Wwuk4) is basically FIRE, did you guys know about this? Thoughts?

Until next time!


End file.
